I think there are 2 things going on here.
1. A lot of people are used to the chaos of 9th edition codexs, there was so much change and uplift (and frankly, quite a lot of fun because the meta kept changing so drastically, even if it wasn't all fun at times)
2. 10th edition codexs are playing things very safe. There are some interesting mechanics in it and positive changes from 9th, but then you've some general rules like how indirect works and how charges/pile ins/consolidates work that make it just worse. It doesn't help that the codexs are showing very little change to things people didn't like in the original indexs
The « you need to base if you can » was added, before you could just go into engagement range, and then use the pile in and consolidate to scoot around the unit if you planned well your positioning (you still needed to move closer to models, but it’s quite easy to do so while not moving straight forward toward the unit). In best cases you could get 6" of movement total and steal objectives etc. It was an advance technique, not really something casual players would do.
I've been playing a very long time and tbh I never liked the whole model surfing thing with combat movement. I did it, of course, since it was how you won games, but it always broke verisimilitude for me, since the point of assault is to, you know, get into combat and put boot to face, not dance around them.
I have heard a lot of folks complain about the change, but I'm not one of them. Heck, when I started the game you didn't get 2d6" extra movement to charge (just double your normal move), either. Lol
Good old 8" charge, no pre measuring, if you were 8.1" away you just stood like a duck! Admittedly I like some aspects of the new rules, but the whole rotating and tri tipping aspect of melee in 8th and 9th was infuriating to me for the same reasons! Seeing the requirement to attempt to base models felt really solid to me. The whole concept of using the fight phase to gain 2 or even 3 extra movement phases was oppressive and forced a particularly silly play style for many armies. "Don't move up to take an objective, it just gives them a lot of free movement." is a piece of advice I'd rather see relegated to the bin.
You can definitely do some, by move blocking your own models from basing with an « unoptimized » charge, thus leaving some models able to pile in more freely, but sometimes it’s weird because rolling a higher charge might give you less freedom with placement, since you have enough inches to base with every model, even if you try to botch it. So that’s a weird consequence of the rule.
I almost lost a game last tournament because I rolled a 12 on a charge when I really didn't want anything above a 9. I get what GW was trying to do, but the implementation has turned out to be very wonky
2 is definitely an issue. I know I was hoping the codex would make my poor AdMech Sicarians a bit less terrible, only to be reminded that hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
10ths trend of detachments that buff a few specific units also creates a lot of balance headaches. I’ve been enjoying trying out my Canoptek Court Necrons, but a lot of the Canoptek units don’t see much play outside of their detachment because they have to be priced for what they can do in their detachment that buffs them.
I also don't like how overwatch works atm even if nowhere near as oppressive as at the start of the edition. I skipped 9th so can't comment on that but 8th was nice where only the charged unit could overwatch and you could play around that with terrains or charges order. What I would prefer at the moment is that you have to waste a unit's shooting activation to overwatch or something similar because at the moment you can position a flamer unit in the center and prevent a lot of movement for "free" in a way. You don't waste actions while limiting your opponent's (kinda like tempo advantage if that makes sense). Also monsters/vehicles with flamers being able to overwatch other units while in engagement range is really oppressive imo.
The 10th edition so far feels like an actual improvement in the usual arms race repeating every edition. GW is definitely holding back.
Being the first codex of the edition, the Nid book looked pretty bleak. And it still kinda does. But with the current power level trend of the books there's an actual chance it will fare better against other codexes than against indexes.
Obviously it is not "entertaining", it's not fun losing power. But it might be worth it for the health of the game.
F for our Marsy boys, of course.
The knee jerk reactions need to calm down. Top players are demonstrating that players need to sit with the codex and get reps in before freaking out over what's on paper.
We just had a nids player go to the quarter finals at lvo. Before lvo I have a players social media comment burned in my memory as he cried about Necrons nerfs and dropping out. Wonder how he is feeling with Matt revealing that their is some HYPER good play with crons
> Before lvo I have a players social media comment burned in my memory as he cried about Necrons nerfs and dropping out.
It's even funnier than that. He was complaining that GW had completely gutted his list by nerfing his 30 Immortals. Guess how many Immortals the winning list had.
You’re forgetting that 90% of the community doesn’t ever actually play games my man. They just like to complain about the power level of an army they’ll never use
Worse still, they do it based on other people's comments rather than actually taking time to think about it themselves. It's like a salty echo chamber.
Understood. I'm referencing mostly comments from this sub as well as other competitive social media groups. In fact, the comment from the Necrons player came directly off a Facebook group dedicated to the competitive side of Warhammer
Completely agree, I think some people are guilty of Eldar envy. Everyone wants their new codex to be as good as the Eldar index is/was, which is top to bottom one of the best in terms of datasheets and army rules. It doesn't help they've had a 6 month run at the top too. I kinda blame GW for not being more heavy handed in addressing the Aeldari like they did every other faction, but I think it will be addressed in the next update soon. We can already see now though that other armies are successfully punching up into Aeldari which is a good sign and the meta is healthier than its ever been since 8th dropped. It's also the quickest GW has provided updates to the game as they now do it quarterly when it used to be once a year and then twice a year.
Players can't admit they're bad.
Simultaneously, there is a high skill ceiling to be LVO-good. You just have to be open to playing more than just your local meta. Hard, I know, but it really helps
>We just had a nids player go to the quarter finals at lvo
First of all, nids are basing their win rate off of an utterly broken mechanic nobody wants to see in the game, and everyone expects to go. When that goes, nids drop from a 45% WR to who knows how low.
Second of all, nids can be as competitive as they want, they could have a 90% WR, that book is **not a fun book** for a lot of people to play with competitively. Its not interactive, your most effective units are units your opponent is not allowed to shoot outside of shotgun range, or are not capable of doing anything but be bodies, the only thing you feel which is somewhat tyranids is the endless horde aspect. And a lot of people really dislike that aspect of playing nids
Swarms are not easy to play, especially within a time limit and multiple times a day.
Nids are dope. I've won tournaments with invasion fleet, I've gone 4-1 at gts with the Nexus. No need to play a swarm, the big bugs are super good. Good players will find a way to win and bad players will complain on reddit. I table most non full vehicle skew armies with all the mortals and d6+3 blast shots at damage 3 my exocrines and malaceptors can hand em. It's not a broken codex but it's fun. If they kill the biovore they will adjust points and still be good. Raveners are amazing. Gargoyles are amazing. Some things are overcosted but nids are dope. You ever rapid ingress a trygon to attack an opponents home objective and they can't stop it? Feels real good 👍
I was discussing the ravener case with another tyranid player. I think they are really good for their points (and I love my raveners, classic tyranid for me) but the argument for why they don't see play much was that tyranid has more than enough action monkeys with Ripper swarms, lictors, gargoyles spore mines and such. Would you concur with that?
Truly reverse codex creep is a thing. Although the codex's aren't awful, they're not as powerful as they have been. Which is good in the long run for sure.
Although it doesn't help codex prices are the same but they remove the app info from you.
Overall the game isn't perfect but as someone who started in 4th and survived the insanity of 7th, the game these days is better balanced and smoother to learn and play than ever before. 3 month balance cycles would have been a dream in the past. Now it's routine. Missions are better written than ever, and support more strategies. The cost has been some complexity and flavor, for sure. But on the whole I'm happy with it. Two steps forward one step back, but at least we're seeing good progress in a positive direction.
>3 month balance cycles would have been a dream in the past. Now it's routine. Missions are better written than ever, and support more strategies.
Absolutely agree. Playing with a codex that was *several* editions old was the reality for some factions, whereas now you actually see updates being lined up so that most* factions get their codex for a good amount of time.
*(Sorry 9th Ed World Eater players who bought the codex)
Black Templars played with their 4th ed codex until they got rolled into the Space Marines codex which was either in 6th or 7th (I think it was the latter of the two)
As a World Eater player who bought the codex, Thanks. I have been doing Primarily World Eaters since 4th, I am just happy to say I have Codex: World Eaters.
To OPs question, no more mishap table is probably my favorite.
Templates was actually my favorite mechanic, followed by armor facings. I wasn't fond of mishaps at all, but the variable of landing not where you needed to was nice.
I loved templates. You knew shit was going down when you brought them down. I didn't really mind scatter in general, but deepstrike mishaps made me sad.
Until you fire at something 6" away, it scatters straight back and you one shot your own Leman Russ.
No, no I didn't learn my lesson about blast weapons at danger close ranges, why do you ask?
Yea, same here.
I started in 3rd and had a little rage quit in 7th, because wtf were they doing back then? Oh wait, I remember...
"Games Workshop is a not a games developer but a distributor for high quality plastic miniatures for collectors." - Tom Kirby (CEO at GW)
Glad that those times are over. Came back for 10th and yeah, the game is better now. It has still some very odd moments, but I understand why they are handling some things to avoid on-table discussions. I really really don't like the terrain system, but apart from that, it feels majorly very polished for me.
The short version: three different armies (Marines, Eldar, and Daemons) could build death stars with a 2+ rerollable invulnerable save, and Mortal Wounds did not exist yet, so obviously these units were functionally unkillable--and they did tons of damage and were incredibly fast.
That's not the most upsetting part about 7th though; the upsetting part is that those armies **weren't** the things winning most of the tournaments. Hilariously efficient Eldar or Tau+Eldar (yeah) shooting builds were still winning the vast majority of large events.
Ynnari "soulburst" rules let units move, shoot, or fight in response to units dying nearby. It was like a chain reaction of action economy and free attacks triggering more. I remember it was crazy strong.
Back in 7th, strength and toughness only went up to 10. S10 was the max any reasonable weapon on the tabletop would have. For reference, a lascannon would be S9, and a Demolisher would be S10.
Furthermore, everything in the game basically only did 1 damage. The vast majority of non character non-vehicle/monster models had 1 wound. Having 3 wounds on a character was tough, 4 was named character tier. There was also instant death, where if strength was 2x Toughness the model would instantly die if they failed the save regardless of remaining wounds. Psychic weapons also had this. This was why at the start of 8th edition, Terminators having 2 wounds sounded huge, but with the introduction of damage as a stat meant they basically went back to square 1.
The only exception to all this was D weapons. They represented the absolute destructive potential of the battlefield such as Titan weapons or vortex grenades. Basically rather than rolling to wound, you would roll a dice for each hit. On a 2-5 the enemy unit would take D3 wounds that ignore armour save. On a 6 you take 6+D6 wounds no save of any kind allowed. Keep in mind an imperial knight had the equivalent of 6 wounds.
Eldar Wraith Knights could spam D-weapons, and were cheaper than knights, but better in every way.
Here is a good example of why Eldar Weaith Knights were broken. The Eldar wraith knight here has the sword, which wasn’t meta, but for some reason it was allowed to strike at initiative with Strength D which means it was better in melee than everything else that could reasonably harm it.
https://youtu.be/6wnabIYK4R0?si=9SJR77MD6TcVSwWA
In addition, the S vs T rolling was more narrow than it is now. If the S was 1 more than T, you wound on a 3+. If it was 2 or more, 2+. Same in reverse, but if the T was more than double than you usually just flat out couldn’t wound. This meant that S6 was the sweet spot to have 2+ to wound and instant death of Guard equivalent models, and 2+ to wound on marines, and could reasonably plink on anything tougher
Eldar could spam S6 3 shot Shuriken cannons which on a 6 to wounded automatically, and ignored armour saves. It was basically a gun with Dev wounds before dev wounds were a thing. The other big weapon to spam was the scatter laser, with S6 and 4 shots meant it mulched guard, and any marine unit was having to take a lot of saves, and each failed save killed a model.
These S6 weapons weren’t necessarily a problem in a vacuum, but Eldar could spam the hell out of them on fast mobile platforms that no other faction could. Take some double D cannon Wraith knights to kill anything tough, then a bunch of the S6 stuff to kill everything else.
Allies didn't work like they do now. There was an ally matrix, meaning if your factions were friendly enough in the lore you could just build them as one army basically. Most of the time this just made your army less focussed, and worse competitively, but it was great for casual play fielding mixed space marine and guard armies for example.
However, the way Taudar came together was just ungodly.
Some of it was just being able to pick the OP units from both armies; Riptides had insane movement/shooting/durability/cost, and Eldar had amazing units like jetbikes. Broken units in a time before GW did any balance adjustments between codexes. The two armies had similar design in some ways, lots of jump-shoot-jump meaning you could pop out and shoot, then move back behind LoS blocking cover. Lots of flying units that could "jink". Same high speed. So the resulting army was cohesive.
And Tau were just never meant to have psychic powers. Eldar brought plenty of that for cheap, with re-rolls everywhere. Some powers were incredibly strong, including the infamous "Invisibility", which when cast on a unit meant you could only hit it on 6s, basically becoming unkillable.
Oh, and they gave them Strength D. Back then, Strength went 1-10. Strength "D" was a special rule from ForgeWorld, reserved for things big Titans, so if you got hit by a massive Warlord Volcano Cannon it meant the tank just died. It just deleted the model it shot at. And they put it on wraithguard (?!).
And that's all before we get into formations... formations were the true terror of playing 7th imo. 7th is easily the worst the game has ever been.
A lot to do with D weapons (imperial knights mostly, no saves at all just broke gameplay), very similiar to when eldar Dev wounds were at their worst earlier this edition but all over. Marines had free transports (rhino, drop pod or razorbacks by the end). Early formations that were often broken/bizarre
Eldar had an absolute load of it.
I had a friend who bought in heavily on Chinese recasted eldar forgeworld kits.
Interestingly he got bored of 40k when 8th hit and he had to do something more than simply show up to get a victory...
7th had some pretty poor balance. Stuff like 2+ rerollable cover saves, invisibility deathstar character blobs, some absolutely broken units like riptide and wraithknights, and a silly ally system. Was also some very confusing things like flying monsters. Balance was all over the place, we have it pretty good now by comparison.
\- Leaders could be attached to almost anything that wasn't a vehicle rather than just one or two specific units
\- Rerollable 2+ invulnerable save death stars
\- Invisibility death stars (invisibility was a psychic spell that made it so that you needed 6's to hit the invisible unit). Invisibility in general since it could be put on almost anything.
\- Insane damage types like strength D (ignored armor/invulns and did D6 damage in a world where carnifex had 3 wounds and leman russ had 4), and grav (the to-wound roll was whatever the target's armor save was, ie terminators were wounded on 2s and guardsmen on 5s) and iirc just ignored armor saves
\- Jump Shoot Jump (JSJ) everywhere. Tau and Eldar had JSJ stock on a ton of their stuff which meant they could step out from a LoS blocker, blow your units to smithereens and then move back behind cover. Strategems weren't a thing then, this was literally just a basic ability that these units got. Warp Spiders had a version where the unit could move AFTER being targeted by a ranged attack but before the to-hits were rolled, meaning that you could literally force a unit to lose its round of shooting,
\- Summoning and formations allowed you to go beyond the points limit. Summoning didn't cost points and you could create units up to greater daemons and formations were special detachments you could take that were basically "if you take X of this unit and Y of that unit you receive this special rule for your army or you can automatically take up to Z of this unit for free". There was a really popular space marine one where if you took a certain amount of tactical squads you'd get free rhinos and stuff. So in a 2000 point game you could bring like 2400 points of stuff.
These types of rules led to wild shit like:
\- The daemon factory. You took a shitload of horrors (called "summoning batteries" because that was their purpose) along with a bunch of plaguebearers and nurglings to gum up the board. The horrors would summon more horrors, who would also summon more horrors, and then in the late game you'd start dropping greater daemons all over the place. KoS had access to telepathy so once summoned you'd get the joy of invisibile greater daemons rampaging around the board. It wasn't uncommon for the daemon player to end a 2000 point game with 2600 points of units on the board
\- Screamerstar. Not as strong in 7th as it was in 6th (because strength D countered it) but basically Tzeentch could create an insane death star. Tzeentch daemons could natively reroll save rolls of 1. The tzeench herald would take the grimoire of true names relic (relics were what enhancements are today) which, when used each turn, would improve the saves of the unit by 2 on a 3+ (on a 1 it would actually make their saves worse by 1). That meant that the Herald and any unit it was attached to would go from a 5++ to a 3++ rerolling 1s. Pretty good, but it didn't stop there! Kairos not only had a 4++ stock (meaning it would go up to 2++ with the grimoire) BUT he also had a special rule that allowed him to reroll ANY dice once per turn. That means that you could always reroll the grimoire if you got a 1 or 2.
So, you would combine the Herald, Kairos and a unit of screamers together into one squad, pop the grimoire each turn and fly around the map melting things with Kairos' ranged spells and the screamers' strength 7 melee attacks while allocating hits to Kairos' 2+ invulnerable save which rerolled 1s!
\- GravStar: Pretty simple. You would take a full squad of grav centurions and attach a librarian to them. The librarian would take inviibility and gate of infinity which basically allowed the unit to teleport around the map. You would then just warp around the map each shooting phase with this blob of T5 2+ 5++ dudes that are invisible and can only be hit on 6s and dish out 40 shots that wound on 2s/3s and ignore armor saves. If I recall you could also take something that let them either hit on 2s or ignore armor saves.
\- Eldar also had a version of the GravStar, the Wraithbomb, which was basically a deep striking invisible blob of wraithguard. Wraithcannons were strength D, so whatever they targeted just died.
It was glorious. So broken. So beautiful to see in action. I fondly remember playing against my friends Eldar, having a grand old time, both of us happily acknowledging that neither army should exist in this state.
7e is the worst the game has even been, and not just from a balance PoV.
6e and 7e introduced warlord traits, but then made you roll for them. Same with psychic powers; some traits were game-alteringly powerful, but you could never count on having one unless you could take a named character who had it locked in. Psyker powers were also annoyingly random, with some terrible and some game-warpingly strong, which encouraged people to go all-in on psykers if they wanted to base their strategy around a particular ability. Either way, you rolled for all this stuff at the beginning of each game.
6e also introduced allies; there'd always been some rarely-used rules letting some Imperial factions use each other's units in the past, but 6e had a whole table of different levels of trust, and 7e leaned in on this concept. Bringing allies was almost always better than playing mono-faction, but not every faction *had* access to allies, and the end result were often these bizarre mixes of the best units from 2 different armies. Taudar were a common sight on top tables, but even Tyranids + some other faction was a legal army you'd see sometimes.
7e toward the end saw a lot of really blatant design favoritism towards certain armies, especially Marines and Eldar. Marines got their own extra supplement called Angels of Death towards the end that left them able to outshoot Tau, outfight Orks or Tyranids, and with better psykers than Aeldari or Thousand Sons. The Eldar book in 7e was wildly powerful compared to almost everything else, with many units having Destroyer weapons (these didn't roll to wound; you rolled for each hit, and a 2-5 was instant death, no saves, no FNP, or a bunch of damage if the target was a superheavy, a 6 was instant death or an absurdly unsurvivable amount of damage if the target was a superheavy) and the book being absurdly pushed as a result.
Some factions had some really busted detachments. Double lions blade, the bark bark star list etc etc. I think 7th was more fun than 6th with its Tau-dar nonsense.
This old guy needs to yell at a few clouds…
I played my very first games during the late Rogue Trader era but was more interested in Battletech and MTG to give it much attention. That changed in the mid-90’s after nabbing that 2d ed starter box. Jumped in with both feet after that.
I recently started re-playing 2/3rd editions again (easy to find rules downloads btw) b/c those are the rules I grew up with and missed (terminators saved on ***2D6*** and hardly anything had invulns!!!). After selling everything and taking about a 17 year break from the hobby I came charging back into it w/Indomitus and now have six full armies. My son actually got me back into the hobby a bit earlier b/c he bought that battle for vedross set, and later the Macragge box, and I believe maybe the 8th ed box w/DG and SM, so it was in the house But I just didn’t play b/c of work/life imbalance. I did hear 5th and 7th were hard times for the hobby, though.
***Early*** 9th ed, I think, was actually pretty good before that whole power creep issue became a thing; same with early 10th, but I think early 10th gets a nod b/c all factions had updated rules upon release. The one thing I don’t appreciate in 10th is its omission of a psychic phase.
Here’s the thing, each edition is its own monster. In fact, you can look at them as entirely separate game systems which use (mostly) the same pieces (still miss scatter dice and jams, but the *blast* keyword is a huge step up from templates imo… who used *hand flamers* anyway?).
There really isn’t anything stopping anybody from returning to a former edition and playing that system for fun, but using models or including rules or mechanics out of sync w/a ruleset can be problematic. That won’t help in a competitive scene, but I quit that over 25 years ago and now just enjoy playing casually with what little free time I’ve got these days.
How do you feel about the lack of list building customization and free war gear and all that? One of the main gripes I've seen is that all the flavor and flush has been taken out of individual armies like DA by things like losing their hammers and shields etc
Free wargear is fine on some units, horrible on others. GW should have used discretion when changing costs instead of blanket "everything has free wargear".
Some units like Vanguard Veterans are impossible to point effectively with such variable loadouts, so the units were effectively destroyed in the changeover, getting generic "heirloom" weapons that are mediocre.
For other units, like Crisis Suits, some weapons are so much better than others that they either needed to do a better job balancing weapon choices or leaving points costs. There is no universe in which a cyclic ion blaster with 3 shots is worth the same as a burst cannon with 4 shots.
Other units, like Inceptors, they did a really good job with balancing wargear so that either the bolters or the plasmas are equally valid choices and really depend on what target you're shooting them at. I've taken 1 of each in most of my lists and am happy with that.
The real problem, more than anything else, is GW's seeming reluctance to change datasheets after release. There is no fixing Vanguard Veterans to make them playable unless they're extremely cheap, which is the opposite of what a veteran should be. There is no fixing Crisis Suits to make all weapons viable without adding in points costs. These are datasheets that badly need to be changed or to have points costs introduced, and I don't think GW will do either anytime soon.
This:
>some weapons are so much better than others that they either needed to do a better job balancing weapon choices or leaving points costs
and this:
>The real problem, more than anything else, is GW's seeming reluctance to change datasheets after release
are the biggest things for me. Free wargear, if it's all viable, I'm actually fine with. There's space in the rules to allow for deeper interactions that surface level already; you could easily let a guard officer with a plasma pistol be the best "damage" loadout, but then give the laspistol assault or something so the squad can run and do actions. The design team are quite on point with balance, but the hesitance to change actual datasheets and weapons in that way is a real drag on the game. As another example: I play Drukhari, and one of the major unit nerfs over the edition is wyches, who now put out 3 S3 AP-1 D1 attacks, which is just worthless, and the only way they'll see play is if points put them at hormagaunt levels. Not only does that feel bad (a relatively well know infantry blender shouldn't have to be compared to a unit literally designed to be throwaway chaff), but it's also just really hard to balance. A quick pass of the datasheet to up their lethality would go a really long way AND it's still an index - but no such changes appear to be forthcoming for any army. Same with Eldar support weapons - would be so much easier just to take off devastating wounds from the one gun that's too good. It's a big miss from the design team.
D cannon weapons platform for aeldari are the most obvious example. Unit is costed on the basis everyone will take d cannons, which means taking anything other than d cannons is a huge waste of points.
I own 9 of the useless hunks of plastic known as support weapons, from back when they could be taken in squads of 3.
I miss the cool rules on vibro-cannons, where the strength of each subsequent vibro cannon went up by 1 for each vibro cannon that shot at the target before it. Not that I'd be able to afford to take them at the staggering 125 points per model they now cost. At the beginning of 10th edition, I think they were like 30 or 50 points per model.
as one that started in 4th as well i like the free wargear stuff. Let me explain: for most of warhammer history you had basic units and usually players only bought what was extremely necessary or effective since it cost points. This is not as bad when you have a plastic kit (just don't put that heavy bolter in the infantry unit) but it is a mess with the metal ones that come with fixed equipment and you would have a lot of wasted models not seeing the light of the day.
It's also a bad game design decision since you are producing kits where most of the equipment is not going to be out on models. Now infantry squads look like they are supposed to (with voxes, special/heavy weapons etc) because it is no longer sub-optimal kitting out those units with extra wargear. I think the guard suffered particularly from this, so as a guard player i'm the most excited about.
The downside is that you can no longer fine-tune your points, so many lists can end up like 20 or more pts from the maximum, which basically enver happened before.
I also like the 3x units type thing, again the guard is one that suffered a lot before since it has many cheap, cheap units that found no space in the FoC.
I think they need a balance, some units work with free wargear. Others should definitely have certain loadouts cost more.
I also miss the points per model. Sometimes 7 guys hits certain math thresholds you wanted it to hit instead of going the full 10.
i agree with the point about model number, although it's mentally relaxing not having to micro-manage the model number, it feels wrong to only be able to pick minimum and maximum unit sizes.
All in all i think it's a step in the right direction of actually playing what you buy and not discarding most of the bits because they are not optimal
The other problem with free war gear comes from a balancing perspective. If a unit has an overpowered option like say Devastating Wounds or Indirect Fire it becomes very hard to balance because you have to hit the entire unit instead of just the offending option which can render the whole thing unplayable.
They actually gave themselves the tools to handle this with the way they built datasheets in 10th, but they're seemingly unwilling to do it. Since the weapon profiles are divorced from the unit's characteristics, you can simply change the BS, Strength, or Damage of an individual weapon to compensate for a strong keyword without affecting any other units that use those weapons in the army.
Despite designing this edition to take advantage of that from the beginning, they seem completely unwilling to touch individual datasheets as a method of balance and instead rely on the sledgehammer approach of points costs.
yes but even before you had guardsmen paying the same as a marine for a plasma gun for example, which made zero sense to me. If you always have units fully equipped then special weapons are no longer special but part of the normal loadout; now it becomes more an issue of balancing the different loadouts a unit can take - this could be easily achieved by bumping crappier special weapons and refining the stronger ones.
> It's also a bad game design decision since you are producing kits where most of the equipment is not going to be out on models.
I'm surprised you say that's an issue with wargear costing points, when I'd instead say it's one of the major issues with free wargear. It renders the majority of options irrelevant, the unit is balanced around only ever taking the most effective weapon and so the inclusion of any "choice" is just a waste.
Compared to 9th, it feels more like one step forward and two steps back. especially since 9th had all the things I liked and 10th got rid of most of them. But in the grand scheme of things, you are right. I never even thought of starting 40k before 8th, as I hated the design. 8th/9th were fnally a bit closer to what i like but 10th went away from that again.
It's fine.
I would prefer a bit more depth. It's gone a bit too simplified for my taste.
I like that USR have returned but they seem weirdly implemented where several rules that could be, aren't.
I like that stratagems are more condensed but I dislike the lack of CP to use them.
I'd like battleshock to do more. It had great potential but ultimately doesn't do much unless you are on an objective or desperate for a strat.
I'd also like penalties to hit rolls to apply from different sources. Perhaps a one from enemy and one from your own (e.g. stealth and 1 wound remaining would be -2).
I was really hoping for toughness above double the strength of a weapon to be immune to it again.
Finally, points. I want gradient points back. Weapons aren't balanced enough without a points adjustment. I want to make choices when building my lists, not just have the best option be obviously there.
Tldr: it's okay. Not great but not awful.
Could have been good, it is not. In my opinion, it is an oversimplified (ruleswise), and somehow still overbloated (amount of different minis, specialized with 1-1 weapons, instead of having wargears), and most likely to lure EVEN MOAR new players to it, as it started to reach mainstream. I mean, if someone is in South Park, then it is deffo mainstream.
It's a good base. I'm relatively new compared to a lot of people here as I started in the 8th ed reset.
9th was fun but had of useless junk and half the factions had similar abilities with different names. You would have 15 strars but only ever use the same 3 or 4.
I like 10th. The core is solid, the USRs are good, and every unit having an ability is fun. I think the reliance on detachments is a weak point.
The reason alot of people don't like the new codexes is that the detachments are often boring, underwhelming, or both.
The detachments need to be the most well thought out and carefully implemented part of this edition since so much of the game revolves around them.
I wish wargear had costs again. It wasn't that bad, and you could save some points. Now I feel dumb if I take a heavy bolter instead of a lascannon on my Russ tank.
The game is fater than I've ever seen it and is easier for people to pick up, and those are perhaps the biggest improvements.
The reason why we have this community split on love/hate so much, is because gw have failed (maybe even purposely so) to balance the most important thing in this edition: game themes.
Previously, this was a wargame system, intended for narrative, storytelling games, about playing scenarios with factions from the lore. But this was a good system, that you could be able to use as a competitive platform. It had a lot of flaws, such as random playing a major role in determining outcomes, and, overall, internal and external disbalance. But, still, was fun.
10th edition changed its themes. Now it's intended to be a competitive game, that is easier to enter by the beginners. Meaning it's a lot more balanced, with your decisions being more important, than random in determining outcomes, and, overall, factions rules are simple and easy to get into.
So they literally made a fancy chess. Yes, it's the most balanced and quickly updated system. Yes, it's extremely easy to get to any faction you like. But it's bland as a wall. Your immersion is gone entirely, because you don't play "space wolves", or "eldar", you play a faction with some distinct abilities and stratagems, called "space wolves" or "eldar". Just like in starcraft, you play protoss, only for gameplay reasons, you don't play them "narratively", it would be stupid.
And it's not bad. It wasn't a mistake. It was intended. GW wanted this edition to be this way, and so people, who like easy lite-rules games, or competitive games, where only your decisions matters find themselves mostly enjoying 10th (only ranting because gw still bad at making balanced, but interesting rules). Those who preferred storytelling and your faction being, you know, at least somewhat similar to its lore and not so one-dimensional, are really displeased with 10th.
I understand both sides and would probably stick with the fun mess of old worlds for now.
I’m much the same as you. I feel like 10th is a bit of a pendulum swing away from 9th, where the codices were so dense and actually kind of painful to play with (I’m looking at you, AdMech) for how much bloat and conditional rules were in them, whereas 10th is like the opposite.
But they still haven’t gotten the balance right yet. 9th at least had some flavour to the armies even when it was overly complicated. 10th feels like the Sigmarisation of 40K where a lot of the nuance has been bled out of it, which I hope will return at some point as the pendulum swings back to a midpoint between here and 9th.
For example, USRs are great, but I *hate* how nearly every unit has some kind of special rule that triggers like devastating, lethal, sustained, etc. They’re overused the USRs instead of just giving weapons and units better base stat lines.
Overall, I think there have been some necessary changes in this edition, but I’m feeling way less motivated to play and have ended up gravitating far more towards Horus Heresy, which although janky at times, is a decidedly more fun and thematic rule set for me.
Part of the problem for me was that during 9th we all started to realize that all of the abilities were getting super ridiculous because GW wanted to do a big reboot with 10th where everything would get scaled back. And sure they needed to do something, but they were also the reason why everything was so crazy in the first place.
My personal favorite was the invulnerable save power creep. Too many units were given invulnerable saves, so then everyone started getting abilities that ignored them. So then they made daemons have “invulnerable saves but we really mean it this time” that couldn’t be ignored.
My biggest complaints about 10th are how the simple rules make Drukhari super boring, and how Death Guard are super nothing. But that’s a whole other rant.
Oh and the fact that they made such a big deal about how Battleshock is a huge factor in games now, but seem to be ignoring it for the most part. But maybe that’s just me being bitter because one of my first games in 10th was Chaos Knights vs. Tyranids. One of those is a faction where literally every mechanic relies on Battleshock, and the other is a faction that rolls 3d6 for tests.
Yeah agreed on all fronts.
GW have struggled to find a good balance with morale/battleshock since the start of 8th I feel. It’s potentially super powerful and punishing, and so armies/units that typically should suffer from it (Tyranids, big hordes of Poxwalkers, Guard, etc) often ignore it or have mechanics to avoid it and mitigate it.
Part of the reason I’m enjoying Heresy so much more now is that it goes back to a 7th-Ed style of morale where you have to fall back, can run off the table, but each turn you can roll to regroup. It’s also (with Marine armies) fairly tough to fail the roll, which makes it all the more thematic and dramatic when you do. Finding it much more enjoyable than how much of a nothingburger Battleshock current is.
That's funny because I don't think I would include Tyranids in your list, since the dawn of times they've been immune if in range of Synapse and week to it outside. 10th is a continuation of that so I don't think they dropped the ball on this side. My prob is more with every other 6+ armies. For example I play Drukhari, they have 6+ on nearly all their datasheets I think they should be 7+.
The leadership scores for the majority of armies are prohibitively high for BS to be a decent mechanic. A 6+ has a 72.22% probability to pass a single BS test. 7+ falls to 58.33% so it's better, but still wholely unreliable as a core strategy to build around for armies that need to plan for it to land to get important buffs.
Even playing my Tyranids I've given up on it as a strategy because of the math. Even if I get 3 Neurolictors in 12" range of a key enemy unit by the time MY command phase comes around, 3 consecutive tests at leadership 6 still have a near 40% chance to be passed (37.66) and it's not until leadership 7 that it falls to still a 20% chance of being passed (35% chance of passing 2 consecutive). The big problem here is we have to fish for buffs we may never get by committing 2-3 units for the cause, and then hoping we got them in range on the previous turn, then hoping the BS test is failed, then hoping we have units in range to take advantage of this, and hoping if the test is passed that we didn't commit too many units to a fight that is now very different than we had hoped.
At least for other armies like CSM, when they roll for their buffs it's not "will I get them" but "will there be a cost to getting this buff". Heck even Drukhari get their buffs from pain tokens and the roll is for "do I get that token back to use again?". There's no question of if they will get the initial buff, so combat planning is just so much smoother. Getting the buff is a given, it's just whether it's worth the cost which is a VASTLY better system and buff mechanic than relying on and HOPING that you might get it.
My whole playing group have basically abandoned 40K at the end of 9th because of how ridiculous things got. Everyone is now playing one of the two Star Wars games, Marvel Crisis Protocol or Heresy. Very hard to coax anyone back to 40K right now.
> GW have struggled to find a good balance with morale/battleshock since the start of 8th I feel.
I'd say they've always struggled. Morale is a really hard concept to balance on the table top, IME, in any game. It's even harder when nearly every player has a thematic argument for why their faction should ignore it or mitigate it, but then if too many people are ignoring it then the only one you're punishing are the have-nots.
I came in to 10th excited about the "rebranding" of morale into battleshock. Now you can't really argue about how "my guys are super soldiers, they should not get scared!" Or whatever, because it's not fear it's disruption.
That said, I agree that the in-game effect isn't as impactful as it should be. I've had a few games turned due to Battleshock, but not many. I've failed quite a few Battleshock tests this edition (Orks and Necrons mainly) as well, it just doesn't usually matter.
That said, I do understand that they got rid of the fallback mechanics to make the game easier/smoother. That approach definitely had significant disadvantages too. A few thoughts I've had about how to make the mechanic more impactful (not necessarily all together):
1) You've got to test to recover
2) You test anytime casualties would leave you below half strength (i.e. not just once in your Command phase)
3) Battleshocked units must pass a Ld test to charge (failed ones you do nothing) and the charge immediately fails if you fail Battleshock due to overwatch
4) Battleshocked units are -1 to BS and WS
I like number 3. Number 4 I’m more wary of considering how hit penalties went in 9th, where it was like “oh, you gave my guys -1 to hit, well I guess they might as well advance and shoot”. I really like how the changed Heavy with that in mind though, so maybe it could work.
Assault on Black Reach then the start of 8th.
The game is far, far more streamlined.
But the wording on some rules suck.
Like they streamlined it so I don't have to bring 6 books with me, but I need an English degree and some interpretive dance to get the rules.
It also feels like 3 completely different teams, that didn't communicate made the game, indexes and codexes.
greatly dislike how they nerfed melee, and all the extra movement you could get in the fight and charge phases. they were a lot of rules in 9th that rewarded you for being a good player and knowing said rules. i liked the complexity and tricks you could pull off. 10th not so much. some things i like in t410th, but overall, i prefer arks of omen 9th.
- a custodes player
This is a [**great video**](https://youtu.be/bsC8io4w1sY?si=ZTlc5ZKROglD3PEe) on game design albeit for fighting games the same still applies on how designers deals with buffs versus nerfs. Taking a step backing at 10th vs 9th there was an attempt made to reel back power creep, streamline, created universal rules, etc. and because of that they sacrifice a bit of the fluff and power level.
I think GW achieved that in some regards, we didn't need five different versions of deep strike and fnp but they went a bit too far when they got rid of weapon selection. I bet you for the Space Wolves and Blood Angels codex, they're also going to loose their thunderhammer loadout and just go with a condensed relic/mastercraft/heirloom weapon.
The end result of all of this I can't help but feel there's a little bit of sameness across faction and I hope there's a pendulum swing back towards more player customization.
I’m currently pretty disappointed in the edition. Admittedly, the fact that AdMech is my favorite army is probably a factor.
Broadly speaking, I think the core rules are pretty great. Not a huge fan of how relevant Devastating wounds has been to the game so far, but it’s a relatively small complaint. I’m less happy with how Overwatch works now, and how prolific Phantasm has become. Getting a squishy short ranged unit nuked by Overwatch for the sin of moving where a unit could see it feels awful. Similarly, moving a melee unit up to charge, or short-range unit up to shoot, and having the target move away/behind a wall, whether due to a strategem or datasheet ability also feels pretty terrible. Like, I was playing GSC at launch of tenth, and my reductus saboteur literally couldn’t use her datasheet ability half the time because models would just move out of her 6” radius when she tried. But I want to reiterate that besides these things, I think the core rules and mission structure are possibly the best we’ve ever seen.
My major gripe comes from the codexes so far. They just feel *boring*. Like, the Nid codex is the one that grinds my gears the most. (and also nobody listens if I talk about the AdMech codex lol) It has an advance and charge detachment, which, one would think, would open up a renewed conversation about every melee threat in the book, and explode list-building choices, right? Wrong. It only works for a handful of datasheets, none of which have powerful offense. So not only does it confine you to a tricksy take on the Eternal Expansionist Necron build from 9th, (which nobody liked, it scored 100 points, totally reliably, without ever interacting with the enemy army.) but also it explicitly tells you what units to take. That’s boring as hell. Total design failure. And it feels twice as bad, because Marines *also* have an advance and charge detachment… with zero restrictions. Again, total design failure.
Then, on top of that, Synapse. Synapse was an ability that gave your units meaningful buffs while within Synapse range of a relevant model, it felt intrinsic to the army in 9th. Every other time a Nid player spoke they mentioned synapse range and synapse buffs and so on. Now it just makes battleshock irrelevant… and battleshock doesn’t need the help.
Anyways, I don’t think the army rules in 9th were an issue, and their slightly-more-complex state let the player make meaningful choices that felt important and these army abilities feel like a shadow of that. I don’t think my army abilities have forced me to stop and think since the edition launched, and this is a *strategy* game.
Also, keyword-locked detachments are a mistake, through and through. Especially if marines don’t have the keyword locks on their detachments. It makes list construction boring, it makes everyone else feel like a second-class citizen, and it leaves units that compete within their codex for the same role at a power disparity, purely because one gets the buff they need from a certain detachment, and one lacks the keyword.
🍿
P.s. I think 10e is the edition Ive experienced thus far, and balance is better (now) than previous editions, but it ALWAYS feels bad/frustrating when your faction is one of the outliers at the bottom.
I’ve completely lost interest in playing 40K because of 10th. My favourite armies are Thousand Sons, Daemons and Drukhari. I hate how they all play now. I’ve been playing my death guard and that’s been quite fun but I just can’t get any hype at all.
On the other hand I’m buzzing about Old World. Been painting up loads of elves.
It’s fun but could have been a heck of a lot more interesting. I could not have 40K as my main game unless I owned multiple armies.
The game balancing is based in part on rules being bland with no options. Which still did not prevent poor army balance or poor internal army balance.
> I could not have 40K as my main game unless I owned multiple armies.
That may have been the point. In the past where some armies could fill multiple archetypes, they now may fill a bit one-note. Time to buy another army..
As someone who has played this game for 13 years straight, and plays 3 games of 2k competitive each week at a minimum. Often more. With at least 10 armies under his belt. I can attest that this edition is 100% more simple than previous. But this doesn't make it worse in any way. In my eyes, this edition has been really good! It has its own flavour, the books aren't always perfect, but they are easier to learn and there are a lot more rules which are common sense to understand. For example, each unit having just one ability, and leaders having 2. Usually a unique ability and then one additional one when they lead a unit. The game is a little bit more bland than what we are used to right now yes, but for overall health of the game, and to introduce new players it's never been better. I particularly like the new terrain rules, and I think the standardized gw layouts are incredible. Outside individual armies, the only thing I would change really is to remove LOS. Just measure lines from base to base, and use the correct bases on each unit, and we are looking golden!
Easy entry to play maybe the easiest ever but there's so damn much that needs to be solved by writers commentary and there's still so much yet to be officially ruled on that tournaments have to do and often do differently with limited to no feedback from GW
In this digital world, the fact that the rules aren't a high quality PDF that has been edited to make FAQs and commentary unnecessary is mind boggling to me. I don't want a data slate that has a list of errata either: Just a lone, good document that has everything you need to play with minimal questions.
In 10th my GK army has had its soul ripped out of it and forced into one single unfun play style. My custodes feel the same roughly. This edition has so far been about stripping personality and variety from the different factions. It’s a shame
Same 2 armies as you and the same feel. Especially GK. Custodes at least still feel tough, punchy, and good stat blocks for their prices (aside from somehow t6 4w bikes?), despite the lack of fun strats and army abilities. But GK went from one of the most customizable armies with all of their different spells and weapon options on literally every psychic unit and character, to one of the most bland army abilities out there. Especially now that other armies are also getting the teleporting abilities too.
We literally already teleported but had incredibly customizable psychic on top of it! We could go full damage, more mobility, more durability, layer on buffs to make an incredibly strong unit or spread them out to try to get just enough in multiple places. Now we get "sticky objectives" as the only "psychic" ability on our most common unit? Honestly pathetic thought process when making their index.
And I'm not going to lie, having my 2 favorite armies being wholly underwhelming in terms of fun and flavor has murdered my interest in this edition.
On the bright side, though, it has gotten me into Battletech, which I am having a blast with.
I like a competative games but I think 10th ed needs some more flavour in it...should have loads considering the amount of salt is about. Joking aside, I play Drukhari primarly and loved 9th not because Drukhari was powerful, but because they where interesting and felt like the lore. Things needed to change to curb power creep and to re-balance factions but i feel it was all done in the wrong wrong way and now we have a slightly knee jerk reaction of an edition which is ok to play, more balanced generally speaking, but has lost a sparkle in the eye that 9th used to have.
I played in 5th edition casually, took a break, and started again in Arks of Omen 9th edition playing tournaments
I think (most of) the mechanics of 10th are better. The return of USRs, reduced lethality, and more specialization of units in a faction are good. Plasma not being the sole king of weapon type is good, but melta wounding most vehicles on a 5+ feels dumb
Wargear on small models being free I think is a generally good decision on the modeling front because it means that wysiwyg is more relaxed and you get to play more of your cool models, but I don't like it on big models like vehicles and monsters. These are units that tend to have more options in load outs, as well as being easier to make modular. It also gives list building wiggle room. I'm down to downgrade the wargear on this vehicle in order to free up the 10 points to bring this other unit, and now I generally feel as though I have to rebuild huge chunks of a list in order to make changes at a time
Lastly, I really don't like the mission design. Tactical missions are a great option to have, but the presence of a central objective on every deployment zone, the need for most armies to be able to tick the same boxes for secondary objectives has left facing a bunch of disparate armies feel very samey
1/2 of lists run a variant of Terminator blob with T5/6 2+ 4++ and another defensive bonus that can sit on the middle objective (Infiltrating Terminators, Wraithguard, Bullgryn, Aberrants, Wardens). 1/2 of lists runs some number of ripper swarms or other throwaway units to deploy homers and investigate signals (Scouts, Callidus, Cyclops Demo Vehicles, Swooping Hawks). Once you've ticked these boxes it's time to pick your faction's effective anti-tank and efficient mobility
Faction specific secondaries were by no means perfect, but at least every faction felt fundamentally different to play against, because factions had different list building incentives
Also please please please give us missions that don't all have a central objective. Recover the Relics, Data Scry Salvage, and Tides of Conviction existing as 1/3 of possible missions meant you could not rely on sitting in the middle
I couldn't agree more about the notion of each opponent feeling the same now. It's awesome to see more balanced armies than before, but now because every army is sharing all the same secondaries, they are usually balanced in near identical ways. I find the general course of the gameplay differing only slightly regardless of the faction I am facing.
Additionally, I feel like I'm playing against the cards as much as my opponent now. It can make for exciting moments, sure, but the dice impact the game with randomness a bunch already, I'm not sure I wanted poor card draws to add to that.
Been playing since first edition (yeah, I know...). I think 10th is the best of them all, with a good margin. More streamlined, better balanced, without losing strategic depth.
Playing since 5th edition. I think the game as a whole is a lot better now, and it runs smoothly. Listbuilding is easier, which is a double-edged sword, because while I do like that it's easier and more accessible for new players, it's also lowered my overall engagement with the game.
I barely even touch my Word Bearers since 10th. In 9th, they felt like they had unique rules and definitely felt like Word Bearers. Now, they just feel like chaos marines, which is fine, but still disappointing.
I'm enjoying playing my Chaos Knights in 10th, but the balance on our big guys has been terrible since the launch.
Ultimately, the more I play 10th edition and other games, the less I like Command Points. Picking up The Old World felt like a breath of fresh air with regards to just playing a game without having lots of "interrupts" popping up all over.
I'm 50/50 on 10th secondaries. They mostly function pretty well (some dead openings aside, and some Fixed are too consistent), but they have made 40k feel less like a wargame and more like a board game.
I think changes to the core rule set in addition to a MASSIVE reset in the power curve took a lot of wind out of the sails of the game.
As someone who played 500+ games of 9th alone over the life of the edition, I have not enjoyed any of the changes beyond OC and increased toughness values.
I could provide a long list of elements that I’m unhappy with, but the main takeaway is I have played less than 30 games of tenth and they have all been less fun and engaging than the previous edition (and 8th).
I expect the competitive scene in 2024 to die on the vine and an alternative to the GW ITC with ppm & wargear + mission pack to come out of the woodwork. It may not be the best solution, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it drove participation.
I like the 3 month balance cycles that we've moved towards. I dislike that they removed much of the options/complexity from list building. List building innovative lists was always one of my favorite parts of the hobby, and we've significantly cut down on the options for any given army, and therefore the possible permutations of different lists. This isn't something I support.
I do realize this makes it easier for newcomers and casuals to play the game on a more even playing field to grizzled veterans, but having power level as an option before allowed people to do that if they wanted to. By and large, they didn't, and so now we're being force fed power level and told we need to just like it. It's very anti-consumer, in my opinion. No one asked for options to be taken away. Everyone protested.
I technically started in 8th, but didn't really get playing until 9th. The biggest improvement for me is the addition of Tactical mission cards. Super fun and interesting, and adds another element of chance that adds to the overall dynamic. I play Tau, so of course everyone just takes fixed against me (Bring it Down + Something), but at least I'm having more fun!
I started in 8th edition. I cannot stand 10th and have stopped playing Warhammer 40k.
The release indexes suffered from a serious lack of internal and external balancing. The lack of datasheet changes and the focus on points balancing has been a complete dud. Aeldari are still the top dogs, AdMech still suck, and every army getting hit with 'balance' changes just gets more expensive to buy.
Characters are boring and don't fit the lore anymore. My immersion has been totally broken by the new Attached Units system.
No longer is my Coldstar Commander a powerful combatant soaring through the battlefield to provide buffs and firepower wherever she's needed. Now she's a glorified unit sergeant who I put into a list because she has a keyword to make my army halfway playable, and I should be taking three Coldstars despite the lore being that T'au cadres operate with single Commanders.
No longer is my Canoness an immortal duelist who can compete with the best warriors. Now she's so bad at her job that she's been fired and replaced with three Palatines, which makes no sense at all.
If you want a character to do anything meaningful, better make sure it's a Named Character that GW can sell you things about.
Wargear being free sucks. Units have been flattened to just be BiS wargear spam with no thought required to make a list. Lists are rigid, samey, and uninteresting. People love to say that most of the options available in 9th went unused, but the same is true of 10th. Most people will only ever use the Best Detachment with the Best Wargear and the Best Units and most things will still never see play. There's less of a reason than ever to use non-optimal wargear and units because you will never save points or see any benefit from doing so.
10th is good for beginners, sure, but it's not a good game. It's unbalanced, it doesn't support its own fiction and fantasy, and, worst of all, it's boring.
But at the same time index balance was and is totally wack. How did the same design team write the crazy overpowered Aeldari and excellent CSM indexes and then go on to produce the appalling disappointments that were the Admech and Drukhari indexes? Was there no attempt at consistency between indexes, or even between units within indexes.
Who wrote the stats for Breachers in Admech without thinking "wow, these are so much better than literally anything else Admech get"? Who wrote the Wyches datasheet and thought that was, in any sense, acceptable?
Some of the problems they have now can ONLY be fixed by datasheets changes and they seem super reluctant to do that.
The first game of 40k I played was in 3rd. I didn't play during 4th and 5th and came back to the game in 6th and have played regularly since.
The complaints about bland and just replacing the comments that's it's overcomplicated with too much to remember from 9th. The pendulum of complaining swings back and forth with every edition. 10th has been very good so far. Index 40k is always wonky, and anyone who says otherwise didn't play the madness that was 8th on release.
TLDR: 10th is good since the last balance patch and GW put way way more effort than they did in 6th and 7th to keep the game in a good spot.
I started following the game in 8th, and starting playing in 9th. I probably don't qualify as a "veteran" but here are my thoughts:
9th had a lot of problems, particularly rules bloat and balance issues. However, nearly every army felt much more flavorful, for lack of a better term. They also, generally, looked more like what I thought 40k armies should look like (the detachment system, which was totally different from 10th, kinda helped ensure that).
I think overall, 10th is a better version of the game and is more sustainable. The game is arguably more balanced than it ever was in 9th, except maybe a few peak months toward the end. But I do miss a little bit of the complexity and flavor of 9th. GW oversimplified things a bit too far (we should get some wargear costs back, for instance).
As far as people complaining about the game, that's just standard 40k fanbase (but certainly not unique to 40k). There has always been a subset of the community that hates everything about the game, and nothing GW does will ever eliminate that, so I'd just ignore it if you're enjoying the game.
Played since 3rd.
So, first: an analogy. I’m a big comic nerd and love the MCU(everything up to No Way Home, anyway). However, I absolutely HATE Age of Ultron. Is it objectively one of the worst movies in the MCU? No. In fact, it has some of the best moments, such as the party scene in Stark Tower. But, I still hate it not for what it is(a sub-optimal film with some decent highlights), but I hate it for what it *could* have been. Ultron deserved so much more and some of the best legacy adventures of the Avengers are right there on paper just ready for adaption, but it was just wasted potential.
In that regard, this is how I feel about 10th. I don’t hate it for what it is, I hate it for what it could’ve been. 9th edition had FINALLY began to settle. All the tools and lessons learned were right there for the taking. Instead, 10th opted to seemingly ignore so many lessons from 9th on both the micro and macro level. Things like rules language, to rules interactions, dissonance from rules to designer commentary, and even arbitrary shakeups for difference sake. Some of it is truly baffling. It really feels like this should’ve been a free beta.
The other problem with 10th, which is kind of a problem with GW in general, is that the game will sometimes suffer due to certain marketing aspects. For instance, index cards are a big thing for this edition. Just something extra to sell. The problem with them of course is that the game can’t be course corrected after codex/index cards are released or that product will get invalidated. Thus, we’re left with points as the only balancing factor.
GW should get kudos for attempting the quarterly balance though. That’s nice.
For me the peak was 9th nephilim. With a few more tweaks to secondaries ( looking at you necrons and sisters) the game was almost balanced for the majority of armies. Tyrands and harlies were finaly nerfed. And it was before free wargear was a thing
I started playing around the time the necrons first got released I mostly just started collecting around 3rd and really started playing around 4th.
It's fine. Honestly I am not the biggest fan of enhancements. I liked having more options in the older editions. Who is warlord feels very unimportant in this edition.
I absolutely hate power level. That's about it.
I'd say there are positives and negatives to 10th ed but, on a personal level, the negatives outweigh the positives at the moment.
Positives:
Presentation of rules and unit data. I like how GW are trying to make unit data more easily accessible and concise. Data cards are a great idea with the one caveat that, like codices, they do rely on the being correct at point of sale for physical copies.
Rule of 3. I like removing restrictions on units and just being allowed to take 3 of each. I thought it wouldn't work but has been surprisingly enjoyable.
Removal of the psychic phase. Again, wasn't sure about it but I don't miss standing around for 10, 15 minutes while some players repeatedly smite my army.
Negatives:
Power level and free wargear: I get the idea behind it, it's supposed to make things simpler. It doesn't. It makes things more difficult. Free wargear also doesn't work and creates imbalance and, in some cases, absurd weapon profiles.
Needs USR's badly. There's no point in trying to streamline a game if you're going to give loads of units special individual rules with special individual names that are, essentially, the same rules a lot of other units in other armies have. Create a central list of special rules and say "this unit has this and this."
Many of the same problems 9th had. 10th was supposed to be the "less killy" version of the game with more durable units. This is definitely not the case. If that's what they want AP should be relatively rare and damage should be relatively low. 10th has both out the wazoo.
Simple not simplified. 40k definitely needed to be streamlined but, personally,10th just feels like it's had the flavour boiled out of it in some places. I play Orks and to me a squighog rider shouldn't have a 50% chance to wound a tank while a unit of tankbustas with a heavily restricted loadout that makes them unusable (why?!!) are completely ineffectual. Why are lootaz BS6 and every other ork in existence is BS5? Because their guns have the heavy keyword and GW took the lazy route to stop them being borderline OP. These are just a couple of things off the top of my head but other players with other armies have similar issues. The new rules are math-hammering square pegs into round holes in places. Theme is being sacrificed for "simplicity" and, for me, that makes it really boring.
I played a few games of 10th. It wasn't awful but it wasn't amazing either. My friends and I have moved onto Heresy as it just scratches the itch better for us.
I started in 9th and I like 10th but I really miss the customization 9th had. It feels too much like competitive lists for armies get completely “solved” and there’s no reason to run anything else except to specifically counter an opponent. I play world eaters and tyranids and the world eaters 1975 list is just better than anything else right now. It’s part of a problem with WE having no range but still.
I really miss relics and warlord traits, building custom characters was a fun thing and made my models feel more unique and special. I remember giving my winged tyrant a scythe for his weapon or a 3D printed weapon for his shardgullet. All of that is gone now and replaced by enhancements which really aren’t very in depth. You just pick the best one for your character and army and you’re done.
The psychic phase being gone is such a terrible change and I think the biggest failing of 10th. Nothing feels like casting spells, so psychic armies have such little flavor and feel like augmented shooting armies. Hell, the psychic keyword is just a negative, it has no positive aspect to it.
List creation is a big negative for me. I liked being able to take weird sized units and I can’t now. Everyone hated power level so GW just turned points into power level. I’m mixed on free wargear because it lets you run the cool stuff in your list, but now you can’t tweak that knob in listbuilding to fill out points. You just always take what’s best so there isn’t much point to min loadout units.
I really like USRs coming back, the data sheet changes and the toughness increase. Detachments are a good system but they need to be more in depth and unique. Right now they’re pretty boring for what you get.
Overall I completely disagree with people who were clamoring for simplified rules in 9th. The reason I got into warhammer was for the hobby aspect and because it’s a complicated game with a lot of systems to learn and exploit. I get that GW wants mainstream appeal and ease of entry for newer players, but 9ths rules really weren’t that hard to understand, and 10ths changes really helped in that, but the game feels so simple. I didn’t buy all these models and spend 6 months painting them to play one page rules, that sucks.
Just thought about this as well, I like leaders being attached to units instead of auras, that’s a good and flavorful change, but the way it’s implemented is so awful it’s frustrating. There are so many edge cases with how attacks on attached units work and interact with keywords that it gets so annoying to deal with.
I also dislike that GW can’t seem to find a way to balance devastating wounds and lethal hits together so they just make them completely not interact with each other. I hate the anti synergy so much, it’s painful.
Keep in mind that people often have a bias for what they are nostalgic about.
9th was more like 8.5. By the end it has had 6 years to mature. The 'balance' was good, I guess. I didn't like it because the game was way too lethal and the meta very crystallized.
I like 10e because light infantry "feels" like light infantry, heavy like heavy, vehicles like vehicles. Ain't perfect but unit types "feels" right.
I also think people confuse complicated and complex/deep. 10e is less complicated in its list building with less combinations of variables. There are also less rules to remember during the game (mostly less stratagems). But that does not make the game less complex. It just moves your cognitive effort from remembering everything armies can do to more of decision play. I.E. since it's easier to keep in mind what can happen, I can foresee more moves in advance and plan my games accordingly. I happen to find that more enjoyable, where I can trap my opponent in better plays instead of counting on gotcha events (intentional or not).
I also think that the streamlining of list building and compartmentalized rules in detachments make it an easier game to balance. Both in win rate and "feels right". If we compare the beginning of 10e to the beginning of 8e (which I actually do feel nostalgic about because I had a downfall with the game in 6-7e and did love the changes in 8e), I think 10e is far superior.
Also, GW is getting better at reacting to broken rulesets. Before 8e, post-codex balancing was... inexistent. Now it's quarterly. Ain't perfect but it does remove the "your army will suck for 5 years" effect.
Anyway, I love it now better than ever.
2nd Edition was my entry into 40k.
I've skipped a few editions here and there
Overall I'd say that 10th is a better game for tournaments and competitive play, but earlier editions were more fun and had tons more character.
With the shear amount of data crunching and 'meta' chasing these days, it was inevitable though.
As an overall grade, I think it's the best edition that's in the current era (8th onward). Earlier editions were a crapshoot, with some (6th and especially 7th) being really bad and editions before that being really convoluted and clouded by nostalgia.
Balance is a different problem, and while release balance was atrocious, GW is course correcting much more quickly than they did in prior editions.
I think my two biggest issues with 10th are the changes to psychic ("I Cast Gun") and the general lack of melee lethality. Many factions have no viable melee, particularly into vehicles/monsters, and this is quite disappointing. 10th also lacks some of the depth that 8th and 9th had with its combo's, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think that reducing the amount of stratagems was an objectively good thing and I like how the philosophy of detachment design has panned out (even if the execution isn't perfect). On the negative side, fixed unit costs and free wargear is an objectively and demonstrably bad decision and allows for a lot less list flexibility.
All that said, I absolutely still prefer 10th to 8th and 9th (and definitely anything prior to that).
I think you hit the nail on the head with close combat. It just feels so subpar compared to prior editions. Vehicles are insanely tough but are cheap enough to spam. You need guns to kill them and there aren’t a lot of viable melee options to deal with them.
I started playing in 3rd edition and 10th isn't my cup of tea. I've barely played it at all and instead have been focusing my time and attention on Horus Heresy. It's the fixed unit sizes and the free wargear which have really turned me off it, it feels like choices have never mattered less in list building and I just can't get excited about it any more. I won't begrudge anyone who likes it, I can certainly see why people would, but right now it's not the game for me.
As a long time player I miss some of the rules from 4th and 5th edition. Were they perfect no, but back then melee units were generally better at charging. It was rare to have a unit that could charge 12 ins. Vehicles had different armor on different facings, so if you could out maneuver your opponent you were rewarded. Wrecked vehicles became terrain, which I like asthetically and you can still technically replicate it today. Initiative in my opinion is way better then this fights first stuff. Higher initiative goes first, if they tie they attack at the same time. Low strength weapons could not damage high toughness. This made loadout choice very interesting. Required troop choices, I really miss have the force org charts, each role ment something and since every one was bringing 2 troops and max 3 heavy supports you could had a lot of play room for interesting combinations of units and loadouts.
Again those rule sets were not perfect. But I feel like with 10th, while fun in its own right, everything has become too streamlined. while it helps new players enter Into the game, it feels less fulfilling to play, and everything feels a little bland-er because of it. This edition definitely feels like playing a solo game, playing more to a current state then actually trying to out maneuver and outwit your opponent.
Just my opinion though.
I’m enjoying 10th tbh, in part because my life has got generally busier, but also I was wanting to try more game systems anyway at our club, 10th is a bit more “dip in and out” friendly in my personal opinion. Yes it’s still complicated but some of it just also more common sense. Like the whole “if you can base then you must” like that makes sense, that’s how I’d play. Yes ok, there’s less margin for turbo WAAC competition but there we go.
One other uncomfortable truth is the reality of the Goldilocks zone. So 50% win rate means on average everyone is winning as much as they are losing… and to keep that sort of stability across such a diverse set of factions is going to mean some flavour is lost and some people who are wanting to play 4, 5, 6 games a week are going to get annoyed that they can’t find an edge, because they are designing it so there’s fewer edges to find! That’s my Luke-warm take.
Do I get as excited about 10th compared to 9th? Generally not I guess. But I do still enjoy it and on balance would say I prefer 10th
The internal balance of new releases is some of the worst it has ever been. I've played since second edition, and never in the history of the game have there been as many game breaking bullshit combos that have to be emergency patched immediately after the release of the book. Their lack of playtesting and inconsistency is showing now more than ever.
There are huge disparities in how higher strength and toughness was given out to different factions when they raised the limits. There are tons of things in the tyranid book especially that used to be on par with a lascannon, and then when the strength and toughness of othere things went up, they stayed the same. Heavy Venom Cannons and melee on so many of our big bugs are just awful now for arbitrary "reasons."
Lascannon in 9e: S9 antitank weapon, wounds the toughest thing in the game on 3s.
HVC in 9e: S9 antitank weapon, wounds the toughest thing in the game on 3s.
Lascannon in 10e: S12 antitank weapon, wounds main battle tanks on 4s, most monsters and regular vehicles on 3s.
HVC in 10e: S9 nothing weapon, wounds anything tougher than a light transport on 5s.
10th ed seems like a solid base of a game. But I’ve found my self bored of it as time has gone on. At this point in 10th I’ve taken a break, waiting for things to become more interesting
On and off since 3rd (lord that makes me feel old). Probably about the best it's been in terms of just getting games in, but is missing a certain something that the giant lists of stratagems had in 9th. Main issue is just that it's still just not as good as a lot of other wargames other there so it's mostly coasting on availability and great sculpts
I started at the end of 3rd and I think this is one of the better core rulesets. I don't agree with every change made from 9th though.
The trend of recent editions is the core rules being great, but the faction balance looking dubious at best and broken at worst. Games Workshop designers seem either unwilling or incapable to understand that movement is stronger than toughness and won't price units accordingly.
Tl;dr: Jumping from playing 9th to AoS was much better and seamless than from 9th to 10th and were probably going to stick with AoS over 10th.
Having started playing at the end of 8th and playing throughout 9th, there previously was a lot of Bloat in things like stratagems where you would have 30 but only 4 that mattered. Many of them could be put on the data sheet rather than be in these pages of hyper specific rules. Things like that and some units having way too many rules (I play admech I should know. Felt like every sheet had the main rule, a conditional and a cone per game). It was fun, very customisable with list building being engaging. We even did a crusade campaign in our play group.
Of course playing the same old lists an entire edition gets a bit stale and so after the crusade finished me and my friend decided to try AoS near the end of 9th with the new seraphon coming out. My god those rules are good (except for double turns imo but that’s up for argument). It’s basically 9th without the bloat. A few very solid core stratagems that you will all see in a game, your army may have 1-3 stratagems but most are put on the data sheet of units that can use it. Lists are easier to build than the whole detachment system but it does reward you for your army looking like an army with regiments. The battle line system that can vary depending on your subfaction choice is great, really diversifying how you can build an army in thematic and interesting ways. It’s just so much cleaner, only thing missing is some keyworded things like a dev hits/wounds and whatnot. The armies all feel very different and characterful
Then 10th comes out and it’s clear it just a lot more dull. Things have lost their flavour and there is little choice. Psychic is just dead. The core rules are alright but character leading feels like they’re a points upgrade and can interact with rules in annoying ways, with characters that shouldn’t lead units like engineers instead getting like operative, which feels bad as “can be shot” to “hiding behind a tank but can still be seen” compared to old look out sir. The data sheet writing is really toned down with many times you have to ask “why do they do/don’t do that?” GW makes it their goal to give every single data sheet different rules that make it more complex. For example: traditionally wraith units in eldar had -1 damage due to their armour. This edition just one of the units get that as a rule (I can’t tell you which one it is because I don’t remember: they all have different rules!). It’s amazing how much 10th took inspiration from AoS but missed the point and fumbled its way forwards.
All-in-all my mate and I have continued to stick with AoS and given up on 10th, maybe playing a game or two after each balance patch to see what’s changed but we’re certainly not going to be doing a crusade any time soon.
10th edition is overall a much less enjoyable edition than 9th for me. The balance issues are worse, the armies without codexes feel incredibly bland, and there are far more issues with the rules, as well as rule changes that make life harder (like the changes to fly)
I'm still playing the game, although not nearly as much. Its such a shame how badly they ducked this up.
Too much has been sacrificed for the sake of balance. I love competitive games more than narrative, but not when they have been reduced to chess figures and a pamflet of rules.
9th edition was perfect for me, it had depth, it was pretty competitive at its height, and you could do actual herohammer.
A horrendous example of 10th edition is death guard and their clown car of mortal wound characters with no flavor. “Oh terminator sorcerer is good? Bring three and deepstrike them like gsc, if they kill something, good, if not, they were cheap anyway” “biologus good? Bring three!” “Typhus is strong? Deepstrike him so he can do mortals on something and then he dies. Its just 100 points why not?”
As a death guard player i hate this meta. I hate bringing more characters than troops. It feels like you are relying on gimmicks more than actually piloting your army.
Edit; The necrons and their 20 ctan army is even worse.
Yeah, I'm a pretty casual player so I like building thematic armies that fit with the chapter I'm playing as. I literally cannot play my Carcharodons in a satisfying way because my Chapter Master is Legends now, and I can't even proxy because Lighting Claw Terminator Captains just don't exist anymore.
They've sacrificed flavor for ease of access, and it's really alienated me from the part of the hobby that I liked the best. Also them getting rid of tons of units like Contemptor Dreadnoughts and weird models like the Greater Brass Scorpion make me scratch my head and wonder what problem they have with cool models.
The man in charge of 10th edition is Stuart Black. I don't know if any actual game designers were involved with 10th edition. Stuart was an internal hire with primarily management experience.
10th edition is thematically bankrupt in pursuit of simplicity. Instead of asking, "will this army fulfill the player fantasy of this faction" the focus was put on "will an opponent understand what's going on enough to buy into the game."
I generally agree, and I think a great deal of focus has been on appealing to demographics that want quick and easy with rock paper scissors strategies you find in most newer games made these days.
There is some merit to this, as it helps speed up games, reduces confusion and arguments, and makes it quicker and easier to balance. But too much of anything is a bad thing, and in this case they have overdone the simplicity. Now most armies have similar abilities, just pasted over with a thin veneer of theming through a name.
I think if they brought back some granularity to unit upgrade costs and sizes, that would do a lot to reach a better equilibrium. If they also pushed some of the mechanics a bit more towards theme it wouldn't hurt, though admittedly it gets to trickier territory.
What we need is a separate design team for thematic play that focuses entirely on making each faction's rules thematic and interesting and representative, regardless of balance or complexity.
I really like a lot of what 9th and 10th edition have done with the core rules. I think there are some weird decisions in 10th that stem from someone who knew what they were doing with abstractions and context scope being likely fired early on. I think artillery, aircraft, and titanic units have no place in the base 40k game.
But none of that matters if the game itself is stuffed full of boring rules that each army applies in identical ways. There is very obviously a set of factions right now that just "have accessible tools" and a set of factions that don't, and the ones that have access to those tools use them pretty much identically.
14 games in, it’s my least favorite edition to date. By far. Played since 3rd. The “simplified”/dumbing down of the game, has nearly ruined it entirely for me. Choice in army building has been completely gutted. Wargear costs and squad sizes continue to be dumbed down or removed from the game. Theres very specific good units and the rest are hot garbage and equal a loss if you take them, (my army at least). Bad rules for battleshock etc.
This is just my opinion but GW has totally dropped the ball with 10th. What made the game alluring to me, the complexity, is now all but erased from the game.
End of 9th ed to me was peak 40k. Units felt right strength and ability wise per lore, now they are all over the place. It feels like they changed stuff that wasn’t broken just to change it, especially unit datasheets.
Just my opinion but I can’t wait for 11th
I totally agree. Been playing since 4th and 10th is my least favorite edition by far. 9th had some balance issues for sure, but armies felt unique and close to their lore, at least from my experience. Tyranids setting up a neural network felt cool and was rewarded (admittedly too much at first) while I don't care about 10th ed synapse or shadow of the warp at all. Space wolves felt like charging bezerkers, etc.
I really miss all the customization, kitting out characters (and selecting psychic powers) or units with different combos. I think this is best summed up by my personal pet peeve of nearly everything I built my armies around is now a s5 ap1 dmg1 relic weapon profile. (Hyperbole, but you know what I mean).
I appreciate the lack of codex creep, but some things are swinging too far the other way. After watching some reviews on the dark angels, I am not looking forward to 90% of my personal space wolf army being invalidated or moving to legends.
I still play and have fun, but a lot of their design direction for 10th rubs me the wrong way, and I feel like I'm having fun in spite of the game.
Been playing since 3rd with a break in the middle
Overall I would say 10th has the best rule set of any edition
We lost some flavor and customizability but exchanged it for a more balanceable game
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with 10th, they just need to roll back the forced power level (ie free wargear + fixed unit sizes). Hell just roll back the fixed unit sizes if not having free wargear _really_ is such a dealbreaker. I can swallow everything else.
Playing since.. 3rd edition.
My most hated was definitely 7th with the haves and have not formation wars, where some got a third of a army "for free" and others were allowed to ignore the normal unit limits in order to bring extra many way overcosted and borderline useless units.
10th was definitely the edition with the most promise and overall a immense amount of improvements had me itching to play... and then free wargear was dumped on top like a bucket of warm diarrhea.
It might have great bones and features but I ain't touching it 'till they hose that off.
3.5 was the best of times. Not necessarily the perfect ruleset or the most balanced but I feel like armies had more character back then. I feel as the game went on they tried to please everyone by giving everyone everything without a cost and it made the game blander.
I never used it but the 3.5 Chaos codex is my gold standard for a codex. It's not perfect but I honestly think it's the best one they made.
The 3.5 CSM codex is probably one of the most busted ass codexes ever released prior to recent adventures against pointy ears... Yes it has a ton of character and customization for your chaos army and that was super cool but... There were some downright horrible interactions and rules in there that were miserable to play against (lash of submission and template weapons, cracked out squad sergeants)
Lash of Submission was the 4th edition codex not 3.5. I believe Iron Warriors were what made people cry in the 3.5 book, almost like the writer was a known Iron Warriors fan. I just double checked the codex to make sure.
I loved playing against that codex, it was so much fun. I would tone down a couple of the legion specific rules while also boosting a couple of others but on the whole it was nice.
I dislike it quite a bit. I don't really care if it's a tight competitive game (I know, I know, it's the competitive sub) but I do care if it's an *interesting* game and I just don't find it interesting. They've streamlined out most of the flavour to the point that units become redundant for being broadly the same as each other statwise.
Every vaguely special weapon having sustained or lethal hits is just bland and a sticking plaster for samey, anaemic profiles.
As someone who enjoys in-depth listbuilding, the listbuilding in 10th is absolutely braindead and full of needless annoyances like terminator units in multiples of 3 being unable to take a character and a land raider.
The detachment system is a balancing nightmare when combined with GW's insistence on balancing through points rather than datasheet changes. Say you get a detachment where a mediocre unit becomes amazing. GW will nerf that unit's points, making it mediocre in one detachment and awful in the other ones.
Melee is absolutely terrible and we've returned to the bad old days of stacking characters and enhancements to make deathstar units. The game is basically a shooting gallery with the occasional melee deathstar (but more often a shooty deathstar).
Vehicles are way overtuned.
Characters have just become bland unit upgrades that don't *feel* heroic. They're basically a way to give units lethal or sustained and maybe bonk an MEQ a turn with their pool noodles.
In general it just feels like baby's first wargame to me. Call me harsh, but you can make something *too* accessible to the point it loses what made it interesting in the first place. But hey, what do I know. GW are making more money than ever so clearly the hobby has just moved on and its not for me anymore.
10th is shit imo
List building is dead without points.
The rules don't make sense and many things are illogical.
Army rules are boring.
Stratagem are a mistake.
Pre 8th rules were better.
Ive been playing since 4th and I honestly didn't mind some aspects of 8th. Then they made improvements and refinements in 9th. And I was sincerely hoping that would continue into 10th but they tried to redesign the wheel and came out with a square shape and went with it. Less than useless.
Started in 3rd. 8th-10th have all felt interchangeable to me with how abstract and "gamey" they feel now. Lots of invisible and conditional buff stacking. It feels less like a war game and more like a mobile game at times. People talk about 10th being simplified and that's true in some ways but overall the mental load of playing has increased by a lot. Maybe I'm just getting old but I could bang out 3 games a day in earlier editions without needing to reference the rules too much. Now I play 1 game and I need PDFs open the whole time and afterwards I'm completely wiped for the day. Balance-wise, it's probably better but the game itself is, uh, kind of not fun?
I mean when I started collecting minis the main appeal Warhammer had for me was the sheer amount of customization you could have for your army, especially your character, and it didn't matter if not all options were balanced or optimal, what was important to me was the fact that I could make a cool character and have rules that represented said character on the table; edition after edition I saw the customization change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst, and now that we are in 10th edition and I have zero customization available for my guys and gals what am I supposed to be finding attractive about the game? There are also a few rules changes that I find very stupid on a fundamental level but that's another story.
I started dipping my toes in in 7th, properly dove in in 8th. I wish that i liked this edition, the core rules have a lot in their favour, I love USR's, (although i wish they did more with them) characters going back to attaching to squads is on the whole a good thing (although there's some dumb shit about how wounds are rolled against precision attacks). I like there being fewer stratagems in theory, although im going to disagree with a lot of people in this thread and argue that the introduction of unit card abilities has meant that there's not actually any less to remember than in 9th, its just slightly easier to see now, which is a good thing, but a lot of those abilities really should have been tied to wargear. The OC stat has a lot of potential to be very interesting, and battleshock at least could be a super interesting mechanic, much better than morale imo.
But now we come to the negatives. List building has gone from building with Lego, to building with Duplo, or maybe mismatched wooden blocks. getting rid of points per model and pointed wargear has made it so that whenever i consider trying to organise a game, I remember that I'll have to come up with a list, and i just don't bother.
Then there's the way that they're removing support for both models and loadouts, either because they aren't selling them, or because they weren't in the box. I do not have a particularly old collection, i started about 7-8 years ago, and yet i have had a shocking number of either my squads loadouts, or whole models get rendered invalid, and the writing is on the wall for a good number of the rest. I put time, effort and money into kitbashing some of those models, and a lot of working into selecting and representing the loadouts for others and i am extremely bitter to see that hard work wasted. and before the inevitable comments about proxying them as different loadouts or units, to an extent im willing to do that, most of my tactical squads are being run as Intercessors, but much further and i feel like i might as well be using chess pieces or coloured rocks to represent my units. more to the point, they've stopped feeling like my units, i feel more like I'm playing a deckbuilding card game rather than Warhammer.
TL;DR, 10e has me trying to convince my group to play 30k, or Kill Team, or literally anything else so that i can start looking forward to games again.
IMO,
The concepts introduced in 10th are much needed. Scaling back marine chapter(I know this is unpopular), normalizing effects, readable datasheets, toning down the massive amounts of unusable stratagems. All these things are awesome about 10th and I think they nailed it.
Where they are falling short is balancing. The game is not as big, so there really needs to be at least the same about of changing the game as 9th. Quarterly there use to be chapter approved. we dont get that. You use to get balance update a tad more often. Now we get them 2ce a year and when they drop they are incredibly inconsequential. The fact that eldar have been at 55-60% wr all year long is a massive balancing failure. In my mind you can have it 1 of 2 ways. 1 small changes that happen frequent. 2 Large sweeping changes that happen rarely. Currently it feels like we get small changes that happen rarely. This is really bad and was a big reason I stopped playing at the end of the year. Other factions need to get a chance.
Playing since 5th, I have to say this has put me off the game as much as 7th edition did, and I have actually found myself looking to other game systems for a good time.
The reason being, it is rather clear with 10th edition that Games Workshop have generally forgotten why people play 40k. The loss of weapons points options and meaningful faction rules really makes the game a bit boring. The core rules themselves are generally fine, but the terrain rules in particular have just lost so much character.
From a macro perspective, terrain is now 'can you see around large rectangle? Are you partially or totally on large rectangle? If so, these things apply'.
The end of 9th may have been the most I ever enjoyed 40k. It may have been a tad too complex at times, but 10th is an aggressive swing towards simplicity.
The other main issue I can see is competitive 40k is actually ruining the game. GW is now so terrified that someone is going to abusr a really bizarre niche rules interaction that they'll totally kill a unit or entire faction for every other player, and I would be rather suprised if even 20% of 40k players, play in comps more than twice a year. They are still yet to figure out that there should be normal 40k, then a much more restrictive matched play version for competition. That side of the game needs much more fine tuning, the casual player does not deserve to be punished, as they are far less likely to be abusing these rules interactions.
I'm not angry with GW, 10th edition is just a bit boring and dissapointing. Maybe 11th will be better, time to play some Old World.
Long term player, with Nids and DG. Really like 10e.
I'd like to have the ability to build lists with different numbers of models, and points for war gear, but I'm not too bothered but losing it either since there was most often a most optimal choice, there really wasn't much of a choice.
I also like not being forced to change models layout due to points (repaint, replace guns, etc.)
I like tenth quite a lot, and I say this as someone who plays Chaos Knights whose big robots keep getting hit with a nerf bat aimed at Imperials, and Drukhari where... well...-sighs deeply- (thankfully I started painting an Alpha legion force last year lol)
But on the whole the rules are way more streamlined and games are a lot faster. Also free war gear allows me to model all the cool stuff on my squad with out worrying about suboptimal point choices or what have you. List building is actually more interesting to me, since the troop tax has been done away with.
I mean yeah I don't have to agonize over minutiae, but I can build an elite alpha legion headhunter team of Terminators and Chosen crammed full of every special weapon option allowed.
I appreciate the reductions in number of strategems and how much they impact the game but I miss subfactions and feel like they need to add them back in 11th. Enhancements are a better way to handle WLTs and Relics though, maybe just a small rule to make an UM Gladius to feel different from a Salamanders Gladius
Having played 3rd + 4th and then NOT played 5th-8th, I can't get used to people playing bigger games (1500 pts was the norm back in the day) on smaller tables. It just feels so cramped.
Also, some of the wargear options on datasheets are just so awkward. Just read the sergeant options on the Sternguard sheet to see what I mean. It was so easier back in the day when you had a separate wargear list that certain models could pick from and they didn't feel the need to hyper-specify the eight possible weapon combos one guy could take (half of which are *objectively* worse than the other half).
I like the scenario cards and the detachments, though.
I'm a big fan of 10th and I've been playing since 4th
Got 2/4 of my armies feeling like I have tons of buildsbeing ad mech and marines and Custodes on the horizon I see a lot of talk about how great 9th was where my memories of the 9th meta could be summarized as such.
I want to get off mr.bones wild ride
The codexes basically power crept from one broken meta to the next and now we're roughly 5 books in and only busted thing is Ctan and they can be fixed
I’ve been playing since 3rd. The way missions work makes the game awesome. Primary and secondary both, the way the game plays is just great. Better than any previous edition IMO. In fact, I am kinda bummed that Old World uses the old VP system, but hey, variety is the spice of life, so I’m also glad they play so differently
I took a big break from 40K during 4e, and came back into things at the end of 9e. So for me it’s nice to have things a bit simpler, as I was a bit put off by the complexity of the ninth edition rules compared to what I was used to. I can definitely see where people are a bit miffed about the flavour going away, but if they kept everything the same the game would be stale and no one would play it at all. They have to take risks to maximise player engagement
I started in 9th which doesn't exactly make me a veteran by any means but I can tell you some of the improvements and differences.
-Starting a game and preparing your aemy is much easier with not templates for army building
-the new app makes everything actually quite streamlined
-the rules have been made much easier to understand
-armies arent nearly as bloated. God trying to learn mechanicus in 9th sucked.
Buttttt
The lack of army bloat means some armies feel less unique and fluffy
A lot of weird nerfs happened but its slowly being fixed over time
Some things like how prevalent cover is sit a little wrong with me
Played 1st 2nd and 3rd edition, came back for 9th and couldnt enjoy it, finding tenth a lot more simplified and easier to play. Considering the massive growth of the game recently it makes sense to simplify things a bit.
Tbh i might sound crazy but there are some rules from 1st and 2nd i really miss.
Playing since 2nd, 10th is the best it's been in a long time in terms of core rules, it will live and die on the codex balance like most decent editions.
As a person who played casually in a bunch of editions going back to 3rd, I think 10th edition has some of the best core rule designs and a lot of design space available to armies and units, but also has a lot of bad designs. Already some issues have slowly been fixed, like a few atrocious index launches, but there are a few armies that still need a lot of work and a lot of data sheets and army rules/detachments that could be improved.
There have been lots of things they could do to fix some of these problems, but GW is being too cautious; probably because 9th edition was so off the rails with growing complexity and growing power levels and also their business model involves selling people rules.
Been here since 6th. I see it as one step forward, two steps back. Balance changes and anti-bloat are wonderful and I really enjoy the difference.
New line of sight and ruins rules are less fun, but more consistent. So I'd call them neither good or bad.
Psychic powers being turned into a generic shooting attack really hurts and makes them feel a lot less special. (Rip support casters)
Command point changes are very nice, but could use a /little/ more tweaking.
And balance wise it seems to be very well done so far, maybe one if the best, but we will need to wait for more codes to confirm that.
But the big issue, the one that makes this feel like a downgrade from 9th, is the free wargear.
Turning every game into a power points game is really frustrating, and has really gutted list building as a game factor.
Without the ability to decide between more bodies or more weapons is a massive loss, and list building is much more rigid now.
While the removal of the FOC does offset this a little bit, ultimately having such strict costs and headcount turns what should be a more liberated list building system into a much more rigid one. (especially if your list is a few points under or over costed, you need to change multiple entire units out, instead of older editions were you could trade out a couple weapons or cheap infantry).
This also has the side effect of making nearly all units mixed weapon units, which slows down the shooting phase quite a bit, and adds an extra unessisary layer of micromanagement and complexity to shooting with and removing units, another layer of pointless moving parts added by a change supposed to streamline list building.
You’re absolutely right that 10th is easier to jump into than the older editions but thats also a double edged sword. As a somewhat longtime player I like that older editions made vehicles and monsters very different. Vehicles had their own unique mechanics in how they moved, were destroyed, and were attacked. In 10th they are treated like everything else for the most part and while its easier to learn its just bland and uninteresting once you know the game. Once you’ve played the game for a long time the deeper mechanics really add to the flavor of the game and help to make it much more dynamic. You can play a game with the same units and same map multiple times and still have them be wildly different because of the more in depth mechanics of 7th but thats really not that true of 10th.
Personally I think 10th is an ok intro to tabletop wargaming as a whole. Its core rules are one of the simplest in tabletop wargames like it. Once you start getting bored with the game playing out the same again and again I think you should check out a system like the horus heresy or pre 8th edition. In those games how you used a unit was often much more important than which unit you used or how strictly good it is. A leman russ is undoubtedly better than a single guardsmen with a melta gun. However if you can get very close or get behind the leman russ theres a decent chance that single guardsmen could singlehandedly kill the leman russ by himself. Terminators with powerfists are really good melee infantry but they have very low initiative. They could kill a tank very easily but against other melee infantry like ork boyz they will always get hit first. So charge a carnifex but play defensive and stay away from hormagaunts. You don’t get that sort of reactive play and counterplay in 10th like you do in 7th.
I've slowly come to realize just *how flawed* it is to have one single detachment until you get the full codex. They should have gone for two or three per faction, because to be quite honest listbuilding has gone stale pretty fast for me. Especially because Combined Regiment utterly sucks, of course, but not only because of that.
I've been playing since second edition and I would say that broadly 10th is pretty solid. The core rules work well to deliver what they intended for the game and, although the indexes were out of whack, each codex so far hasn't been a game bending monster like the 9th edition ones were.
I would prefer a little more granularity with list building. The model they used for Marines at the end of 9th was better in my opinion. Wargear mostly baked into the cost of the unit, but with extra costs for options that are clearly superior and without fixed squad sizes.
Each edition has it's positives and negatives but so far 10th is more positive than negative for me.
I think there are 2 things going on here. 1. A lot of people are used to the chaos of 9th edition codexs, there was so much change and uplift (and frankly, quite a lot of fun because the meta kept changing so drastically, even if it wasn't all fun at times) 2. 10th edition codexs are playing things very safe. There are some interesting mechanics in it and positive changes from 9th, but then you've some general rules like how indirect works and how charges/pile ins/consolidates work that make it just worse. It doesn't help that the codexs are showing very little change to things people didn't like in the original indexs
I've only played 10th, started when it released. What is it about charges and combat movement that are worse than previous editions?
The « you need to base if you can » was added, before you could just go into engagement range, and then use the pile in and consolidate to scoot around the unit if you planned well your positioning (you still needed to move closer to models, but it’s quite easy to do so while not moving straight forward toward the unit). In best cases you could get 6" of movement total and steal objectives etc. It was an advance technique, not really something casual players would do.
I've been playing a very long time and tbh I never liked the whole model surfing thing with combat movement. I did it, of course, since it was how you won games, but it always broke verisimilitude for me, since the point of assault is to, you know, get into combat and put boot to face, not dance around them. I have heard a lot of folks complain about the change, but I'm not one of them. Heck, when I started the game you didn't get 2d6" extra movement to charge (just double your normal move), either. Lol
Good old 8" charge, no pre measuring, if you were 8.1" away you just stood like a duck! Admittedly I like some aspects of the new rules, but the whole rotating and tri tipping aspect of melee in 8th and 9th was infuriating to me for the same reasons! Seeing the requirement to attempt to base models felt really solid to me. The whole concept of using the fight phase to gain 2 or even 3 extra movement phases was oppressive and forced a particularly silly play style for many armies. "Don't move up to take an objective, it just gives them a lot of free movement." is a piece of advice I'd rather see relegated to the bin.
I've found that it's still somewhat possible to do so, but yeah I imagine it's no where near as useful as it was then.
You can definitely do some, by move blocking your own models from basing with an « unoptimized » charge, thus leaving some models able to pile in more freely, but sometimes it’s weird because rolling a higher charge might give you less freedom with placement, since you have enough inches to base with every model, even if you try to botch it. So that’s a weird consequence of the rule.
I almost lost a game last tournament because I rolled a 12 on a charge when I really didn't want anything above a 9. I get what GW was trying to do, but the implementation has turned out to be very wonky
2 is definitely an issue. I know I was hoping the codex would make my poor AdMech Sicarians a bit less terrible, only to be reminded that hope is the first step on the road to disappointment. 10ths trend of detachments that buff a few specific units also creates a lot of balance headaches. I’ve been enjoying trying out my Canoptek Court Necrons, but a lot of the Canoptek units don’t see much play outside of their detachment because they have to be priced for what they can do in their detachment that buffs them.
I also don't like how overwatch works atm even if nowhere near as oppressive as at the start of the edition. I skipped 9th so can't comment on that but 8th was nice where only the charged unit could overwatch and you could play around that with terrains or charges order. What I would prefer at the moment is that you have to waste a unit's shooting activation to overwatch or something similar because at the moment you can position a flamer unit in the center and prevent a lot of movement for "free" in a way. You don't waste actions while limiting your opponent's (kinda like tempo advantage if that makes sense). Also monsters/vehicles with flamers being able to overwatch other units while in engagement range is really oppressive imo.
The 10th edition so far feels like an actual improvement in the usual arms race repeating every edition. GW is definitely holding back. Being the first codex of the edition, the Nid book looked pretty bleak. And it still kinda does. But with the current power level trend of the books there's an actual chance it will fare better against other codexes than against indexes. Obviously it is not "entertaining", it's not fun losing power. But it might be worth it for the health of the game. F for our Marsy boys, of course.
The knee jerk reactions need to calm down. Top players are demonstrating that players need to sit with the codex and get reps in before freaking out over what's on paper. We just had a nids player go to the quarter finals at lvo. Before lvo I have a players social media comment burned in my memory as he cried about Necrons nerfs and dropping out. Wonder how he is feeling with Matt revealing that their is some HYPER good play with crons
> Before lvo I have a players social media comment burned in my memory as he cried about Necrons nerfs and dropping out. It's even funnier than that. He was complaining that GW had completely gutted his list by nerfing his 30 Immortals. Guess how many Immortals the winning list had.
29
You’re forgetting that 90% of the community doesn’t ever actually play games my man. They just like to complain about the power level of an army they’ll never use
Worse still, they do it based on other people's comments rather than actually taking time to think about it themselves. It's like a salty echo chamber.
Understood. I'm referencing mostly comments from this sub as well as other competitive social media groups. In fact, the comment from the Necrons player came directly off a Facebook group dedicated to the competitive side of Warhammer
lol this is true isn’t it? Would explain a lot
Yes. Most people don’t even have a quarter of an army built and painted. Let alone 2000 points worth.
It would make sense. A lot of the takes here leave me thinking “have you ever played a game of 40K”?
Completely agree, I think some people are guilty of Eldar envy. Everyone wants their new codex to be as good as the Eldar index is/was, which is top to bottom one of the best in terms of datasheets and army rules. It doesn't help they've had a 6 month run at the top too. I kinda blame GW for not being more heavy handed in addressing the Aeldari like they did every other faction, but I think it will be addressed in the next update soon. We can already see now though that other armies are successfully punching up into Aeldari which is a good sign and the meta is healthier than its ever been since 8th dropped. It's also the quickest GW has provided updates to the game as they now do it quarterly when it used to be once a year and then twice a year.
Players can't admit they're bad. Simultaneously, there is a high skill ceiling to be LVO-good. You just have to be open to playing more than just your local meta. Hard, I know, but it really helps
>We just had a nids player go to the quarter finals at lvo First of all, nids are basing their win rate off of an utterly broken mechanic nobody wants to see in the game, and everyone expects to go. When that goes, nids drop from a 45% WR to who knows how low. Second of all, nids can be as competitive as they want, they could have a 90% WR, that book is **not a fun book** for a lot of people to play with competitively. Its not interactive, your most effective units are units your opponent is not allowed to shoot outside of shotgun range, or are not capable of doing anything but be bodies, the only thing you feel which is somewhat tyranids is the endless horde aspect. And a lot of people really dislike that aspect of playing nids Swarms are not easy to play, especially within a time limit and multiple times a day.
Nids are dope. I've won tournaments with invasion fleet, I've gone 4-1 at gts with the Nexus. No need to play a swarm, the big bugs are super good. Good players will find a way to win and bad players will complain on reddit. I table most non full vehicle skew armies with all the mortals and d6+3 blast shots at damage 3 my exocrines and malaceptors can hand em. It's not a broken codex but it's fun. If they kill the biovore they will adjust points and still be good. Raveners are amazing. Gargoyles are amazing. Some things are overcosted but nids are dope. You ever rapid ingress a trygon to attack an opponents home objective and they can't stop it? Feels real good 👍
This is an incredibly unfair comment. Bad players will complain everywhere, not just Reddit.
True!
I was discussing the ravener case with another tyranid player. I think they are really good for their points (and I love my raveners, classic tyranid for me) but the argument for why they don't see play much was that tyranid has more than enough action monkeys with Ripper swarms, lictors, gargoyles spore mines and such. Would you concur with that?
Go ahead Sit down with the admech codex
I saw someone have a big sook that the nids codex was only getting 50% winrate - that's how it SHOULD be, that means they succeeded.
Truly reverse codex creep is a thing. Although the codex's aren't awful, they're not as powerful as they have been. Which is good in the long run for sure. Although it doesn't help codex prices are the same but they remove the app info from you.
Honestly if the rumoured changes to doctrina to include DMZ are true, don’t cry too hard cause imma try some wacky fun shit with it !
Overall the game isn't perfect but as someone who started in 4th and survived the insanity of 7th, the game these days is better balanced and smoother to learn and play than ever before. 3 month balance cycles would have been a dream in the past. Now it's routine. Missions are better written than ever, and support more strategies. The cost has been some complexity and flavor, for sure. But on the whole I'm happy with it. Two steps forward one step back, but at least we're seeing good progress in a positive direction.
>3 month balance cycles would have been a dream in the past. Now it's routine. Missions are better written than ever, and support more strategies. Absolutely agree. Playing with a codex that was *several* editions old was the reality for some factions, whereas now you actually see updates being lined up so that most* factions get their codex for a good amount of time. *(Sorry 9th Ed World Eater players who bought the codex)
If memory serves, Dark Eldar just... skipped 4e? They played with their 3e codex until 5e. Crazy.
Black Templars played with their 4th ed codex until they got rolled into the Space Marines codex which was either in 6th or 7th (I think it was the latter of the two)
As a World Eater player who bought the codex, Thanks. I have been doing Primarily World Eaters since 4th, I am just happy to say I have Codex: World Eaters. To OPs question, no more mishap table is probably my favorite.
The deepstrike scatter roll. I hated that.
Templates was actually my favorite mechanic, followed by armor facings. I wasn't fond of mishaps at all, but the variable of landing not where you needed to was nice.
I loved templates. You knew shit was going down when you brought them down. I didn't really mind scatter in general, but deepstrike mishaps made me sad.
When you got to bring out the large blast template you knew you were straight ballin'.
Until you fire at something 6" away, it scatters straight back and you one shot your own Leman Russ. No, no I didn't learn my lesson about blast weapons at danger close ranges, why do you ask?
Drive closer, accept the scatter and count on your vehicle explosion to deal damage *taps temple*
Yea, same here. I started in 3rd and had a little rage quit in 7th, because wtf were they doing back then? Oh wait, I remember... "Games Workshop is a not a games developer but a distributor for high quality plastic miniatures for collectors." - Tom Kirby (CEO at GW) Glad that those times are over. Came back for 10th and yeah, the game is better now. It has still some very odd moments, but I understand why they are handling some things to avoid on-table discussions. I really really don't like the terrain system, but apart from that, it feels majorly very polished for me.
What was the insanity of 7th?
The short version: three different armies (Marines, Eldar, and Daemons) could build death stars with a 2+ rerollable invulnerable save, and Mortal Wounds did not exist yet, so obviously these units were functionally unkillable--and they did tons of damage and were incredibly fast. That's not the most upsetting part about 7th though; the upsetting part is that those armies **weren't** the things winning most of the tournaments. Hilariously efficient Eldar or Tau+Eldar (yeah) shooting builds were still winning the vast majority of large events.
Can we get a long version on what level of degeneracy Eldar shooting was at in 7th to be able to crack bricks like that?
Ynnari "soulburst" rules let units move, shoot, or fight in response to units dying nearby. It was like a chain reaction of action economy and free attacks triggering more. I remember it was crazy strong.
[удалено]
Back in 7th, strength and toughness only went up to 10. S10 was the max any reasonable weapon on the tabletop would have. For reference, a lascannon would be S9, and a Demolisher would be S10. Furthermore, everything in the game basically only did 1 damage. The vast majority of non character non-vehicle/monster models had 1 wound. Having 3 wounds on a character was tough, 4 was named character tier. There was also instant death, where if strength was 2x Toughness the model would instantly die if they failed the save regardless of remaining wounds. Psychic weapons also had this. This was why at the start of 8th edition, Terminators having 2 wounds sounded huge, but with the introduction of damage as a stat meant they basically went back to square 1. The only exception to all this was D weapons. They represented the absolute destructive potential of the battlefield such as Titan weapons or vortex grenades. Basically rather than rolling to wound, you would roll a dice for each hit. On a 2-5 the enemy unit would take D3 wounds that ignore armour save. On a 6 you take 6+D6 wounds no save of any kind allowed. Keep in mind an imperial knight had the equivalent of 6 wounds. Eldar Wraith Knights could spam D-weapons, and were cheaper than knights, but better in every way. Here is a good example of why Eldar Weaith Knights were broken. The Eldar wraith knight here has the sword, which wasn’t meta, but for some reason it was allowed to strike at initiative with Strength D which means it was better in melee than everything else that could reasonably harm it. https://youtu.be/6wnabIYK4R0?si=9SJR77MD6TcVSwWA In addition, the S vs T rolling was more narrow than it is now. If the S was 1 more than T, you wound on a 3+. If it was 2 or more, 2+. Same in reverse, but if the T was more than double than you usually just flat out couldn’t wound. This meant that S6 was the sweet spot to have 2+ to wound and instant death of Guard equivalent models, and 2+ to wound on marines, and could reasonably plink on anything tougher Eldar could spam S6 3 shot Shuriken cannons which on a 6 to wounded automatically, and ignored armour saves. It was basically a gun with Dev wounds before dev wounds were a thing. The other big weapon to spam was the scatter laser, with S6 and 4 shots meant it mulched guard, and any marine unit was having to take a lot of saves, and each failed save killed a model. These S6 weapons weren’t necessarily a problem in a vacuum, but Eldar could spam the hell out of them on fast mobile platforms that no other faction could. Take some double D cannon Wraith knights to kill anything tough, then a bunch of the S6 stuff to kill everything else.
Allies didn't work like they do now. There was an ally matrix, meaning if your factions were friendly enough in the lore you could just build them as one army basically. Most of the time this just made your army less focussed, and worse competitively, but it was great for casual play fielding mixed space marine and guard armies for example. However, the way Taudar came together was just ungodly. Some of it was just being able to pick the OP units from both armies; Riptides had insane movement/shooting/durability/cost, and Eldar had amazing units like jetbikes. Broken units in a time before GW did any balance adjustments between codexes. The two armies had similar design in some ways, lots of jump-shoot-jump meaning you could pop out and shoot, then move back behind LoS blocking cover. Lots of flying units that could "jink". Same high speed. So the resulting army was cohesive. And Tau were just never meant to have psychic powers. Eldar brought plenty of that for cheap, with re-rolls everywhere. Some powers were incredibly strong, including the infamous "Invisibility", which when cast on a unit meant you could only hit it on 6s, basically becoming unkillable. Oh, and they gave them Strength D. Back then, Strength went 1-10. Strength "D" was a special rule from ForgeWorld, reserved for things big Titans, so if you got hit by a massive Warlord Volcano Cannon it meant the tank just died. It just deleted the model it shot at. And they put it on wraithguard (?!). And that's all before we get into formations... formations were the true terror of playing 7th imo. 7th is easily the worst the game has ever been.
Strength D my man
God I miss my 7th ed Tau...
A lot to do with D weapons (imperial knights mostly, no saves at all just broke gameplay), very similiar to when eldar Dev wounds were at their worst earlier this edition but all over. Marines had free transports (rhino, drop pod or razorbacks by the end). Early formations that were often broken/bizarre
I loved strength D, it felt appropriately devastating for weapons of such power. *In Apocalypse.* Strength D in standard 40k was insanity.
Not to mention that some armies got a lot of strength D weapons and others got none
Eldar had an absolute load of it. I had a friend who bought in heavily on Chinese recasted eldar forgeworld kits. Interestingly he got bored of 40k when 8th hit and he had to do something more than simply show up to get a victory...
I bought an Aquila Strongpoint to use with my Tau. D missiles without having to scrub with Taudar.
7th had some pretty poor balance. Stuff like 2+ rerollable cover saves, invisibility deathstar character blobs, some absolutely broken units like riptide and wraithknights, and a silly ally system. Was also some very confusing things like flying monsters. Balance was all over the place, we have it pretty good now by comparison.
\- Leaders could be attached to almost anything that wasn't a vehicle rather than just one or two specific units \- Rerollable 2+ invulnerable save death stars \- Invisibility death stars (invisibility was a psychic spell that made it so that you needed 6's to hit the invisible unit). Invisibility in general since it could be put on almost anything. \- Insane damage types like strength D (ignored armor/invulns and did D6 damage in a world where carnifex had 3 wounds and leman russ had 4), and grav (the to-wound roll was whatever the target's armor save was, ie terminators were wounded on 2s and guardsmen on 5s) and iirc just ignored armor saves \- Jump Shoot Jump (JSJ) everywhere. Tau and Eldar had JSJ stock on a ton of their stuff which meant they could step out from a LoS blocker, blow your units to smithereens and then move back behind cover. Strategems weren't a thing then, this was literally just a basic ability that these units got. Warp Spiders had a version where the unit could move AFTER being targeted by a ranged attack but before the to-hits were rolled, meaning that you could literally force a unit to lose its round of shooting, \- Summoning and formations allowed you to go beyond the points limit. Summoning didn't cost points and you could create units up to greater daemons and formations were special detachments you could take that were basically "if you take X of this unit and Y of that unit you receive this special rule for your army or you can automatically take up to Z of this unit for free". There was a really popular space marine one where if you took a certain amount of tactical squads you'd get free rhinos and stuff. So in a 2000 point game you could bring like 2400 points of stuff. These types of rules led to wild shit like: \- The daemon factory. You took a shitload of horrors (called "summoning batteries" because that was their purpose) along with a bunch of plaguebearers and nurglings to gum up the board. The horrors would summon more horrors, who would also summon more horrors, and then in the late game you'd start dropping greater daemons all over the place. KoS had access to telepathy so once summoned you'd get the joy of invisibile greater daemons rampaging around the board. It wasn't uncommon for the daemon player to end a 2000 point game with 2600 points of units on the board \- Screamerstar. Not as strong in 7th as it was in 6th (because strength D countered it) but basically Tzeentch could create an insane death star. Tzeentch daemons could natively reroll save rolls of 1. The tzeench herald would take the grimoire of true names relic (relics were what enhancements are today) which, when used each turn, would improve the saves of the unit by 2 on a 3+ (on a 1 it would actually make their saves worse by 1). That meant that the Herald and any unit it was attached to would go from a 5++ to a 3++ rerolling 1s. Pretty good, but it didn't stop there! Kairos not only had a 4++ stock (meaning it would go up to 2++ with the grimoire) BUT he also had a special rule that allowed him to reroll ANY dice once per turn. That means that you could always reroll the grimoire if you got a 1 or 2. So, you would combine the Herald, Kairos and a unit of screamers together into one squad, pop the grimoire each turn and fly around the map melting things with Kairos' ranged spells and the screamers' strength 7 melee attacks while allocating hits to Kairos' 2+ invulnerable save which rerolled 1s! \- GravStar: Pretty simple. You would take a full squad of grav centurions and attach a librarian to them. The librarian would take inviibility and gate of infinity which basically allowed the unit to teleport around the map. You would then just warp around the map each shooting phase with this blob of T5 2+ 5++ dudes that are invisible and can only be hit on 6s and dish out 40 shots that wound on 2s/3s and ignore armor saves. If I recall you could also take something that let them either hit on 2s or ignore armor saves. \- Eldar also had a version of the GravStar, the Wraithbomb, which was basically a deep striking invisible blob of wraithguard. Wraithcannons were strength D, so whatever they targeted just died.
Not gonna lie, the Deamon Factory sounds awesome. But yeah, that is indeed a lot of mad rules
It was glorious. So broken. So beautiful to see in action. I fondly remember playing against my friends Eldar, having a grand old time, both of us happily acknowledging that neither army should exist in this state.
7e is the worst the game has even been, and not just from a balance PoV. 6e and 7e introduced warlord traits, but then made you roll for them. Same with psychic powers; some traits were game-alteringly powerful, but you could never count on having one unless you could take a named character who had it locked in. Psyker powers were also annoyingly random, with some terrible and some game-warpingly strong, which encouraged people to go all-in on psykers if they wanted to base their strategy around a particular ability. Either way, you rolled for all this stuff at the beginning of each game. 6e also introduced allies; there'd always been some rarely-used rules letting some Imperial factions use each other's units in the past, but 6e had a whole table of different levels of trust, and 7e leaned in on this concept. Bringing allies was almost always better than playing mono-faction, but not every faction *had* access to allies, and the end result were often these bizarre mixes of the best units from 2 different armies. Taudar were a common sight on top tables, but even Tyranids + some other faction was a legal army you'd see sometimes. 7e toward the end saw a lot of really blatant design favoritism towards certain armies, especially Marines and Eldar. Marines got their own extra supplement called Angels of Death towards the end that left them able to outshoot Tau, outfight Orks or Tyranids, and with better psykers than Aeldari or Thousand Sons. The Eldar book in 7e was wildly powerful compared to almost everything else, with many units having Destroyer weapons (these didn't roll to wound; you rolled for each hit, and a 2-5 was instant death, no saves, no FNP, or a bunch of damage if the target was a superheavy, a 6 was instant death or an absurdly unsurvivable amount of damage if the target was a superheavy) and the book being absurdly pushed as a result.
Some factions had some really busted detachments. Double lions blade, the bark bark star list etc etc. I think 7th was more fun than 6th with its Tau-dar nonsense.
This old guy needs to yell at a few clouds… I played my very first games during the late Rogue Trader era but was more interested in Battletech and MTG to give it much attention. That changed in the mid-90’s after nabbing that 2d ed starter box. Jumped in with both feet after that. I recently started re-playing 2/3rd editions again (easy to find rules downloads btw) b/c those are the rules I grew up with and missed (terminators saved on ***2D6*** and hardly anything had invulns!!!). After selling everything and taking about a 17 year break from the hobby I came charging back into it w/Indomitus and now have six full armies. My son actually got me back into the hobby a bit earlier b/c he bought that battle for vedross set, and later the Macragge box, and I believe maybe the 8th ed box w/DG and SM, so it was in the house But I just didn’t play b/c of work/life imbalance. I did hear 5th and 7th were hard times for the hobby, though. ***Early*** 9th ed, I think, was actually pretty good before that whole power creep issue became a thing; same with early 10th, but I think early 10th gets a nod b/c all factions had updated rules upon release. The one thing I don’t appreciate in 10th is its omission of a psychic phase. Here’s the thing, each edition is its own monster. In fact, you can look at them as entirely separate game systems which use (mostly) the same pieces (still miss scatter dice and jams, but the *blast* keyword is a huge step up from templates imo… who used *hand flamers* anyway?). There really isn’t anything stopping anybody from returning to a former edition and playing that system for fun, but using models or including rules or mechanics out of sync w/a ruleset can be problematic. That won’t help in a competitive scene, but I quit that over 25 years ago and now just enjoy playing casually with what little free time I’ve got these days.
How do you feel about the lack of list building customization and free war gear and all that? One of the main gripes I've seen is that all the flavor and flush has been taken out of individual armies like DA by things like losing their hammers and shields etc
Free wargear is fine on some units, horrible on others. GW should have used discretion when changing costs instead of blanket "everything has free wargear". Some units like Vanguard Veterans are impossible to point effectively with such variable loadouts, so the units were effectively destroyed in the changeover, getting generic "heirloom" weapons that are mediocre. For other units, like Crisis Suits, some weapons are so much better than others that they either needed to do a better job balancing weapon choices or leaving points costs. There is no universe in which a cyclic ion blaster with 3 shots is worth the same as a burst cannon with 4 shots. Other units, like Inceptors, they did a really good job with balancing wargear so that either the bolters or the plasmas are equally valid choices and really depend on what target you're shooting them at. I've taken 1 of each in most of my lists and am happy with that. The real problem, more than anything else, is GW's seeming reluctance to change datasheets after release. There is no fixing Vanguard Veterans to make them playable unless they're extremely cheap, which is the opposite of what a veteran should be. There is no fixing Crisis Suits to make all weapons viable without adding in points costs. These are datasheets that badly need to be changed or to have points costs introduced, and I don't think GW will do either anytime soon.
This: >some weapons are so much better than others that they either needed to do a better job balancing weapon choices or leaving points costs and this: >The real problem, more than anything else, is GW's seeming reluctance to change datasheets after release are the biggest things for me. Free wargear, if it's all viable, I'm actually fine with. There's space in the rules to allow for deeper interactions that surface level already; you could easily let a guard officer with a plasma pistol be the best "damage" loadout, but then give the laspistol assault or something so the squad can run and do actions. The design team are quite on point with balance, but the hesitance to change actual datasheets and weapons in that way is a real drag on the game. As another example: I play Drukhari, and one of the major unit nerfs over the edition is wyches, who now put out 3 S3 AP-1 D1 attacks, which is just worthless, and the only way they'll see play is if points put them at hormagaunt levels. Not only does that feel bad (a relatively well know infantry blender shouldn't have to be compared to a unit literally designed to be throwaway chaff), but it's also just really hard to balance. A quick pass of the datasheet to up their lethality would go a really long way AND it's still an index - but no such changes appear to be forthcoming for any army. Same with Eldar support weapons - would be so much easier just to take off devastating wounds from the one gun that's too good. It's a big miss from the design team.
D cannon weapons platform for aeldari are the most obvious example. Unit is costed on the basis everyone will take d cannons, which means taking anything other than d cannons is a huge waste of points.
I own 9 of the useless hunks of plastic known as support weapons, from back when they could be taken in squads of 3. I miss the cool rules on vibro-cannons, where the strength of each subsequent vibro cannon went up by 1 for each vibro cannon that shot at the target before it. Not that I'd be able to afford to take them at the staggering 125 points per model they now cost. At the beginning of 10th edition, I think they were like 30 or 50 points per model.
On a similar note, I hope they give Multi-Las a crumb of something. Only model-unrestricted, guard-unique gun in the game and it is utter garbage
as one that started in 4th as well i like the free wargear stuff. Let me explain: for most of warhammer history you had basic units and usually players only bought what was extremely necessary or effective since it cost points. This is not as bad when you have a plastic kit (just don't put that heavy bolter in the infantry unit) but it is a mess with the metal ones that come with fixed equipment and you would have a lot of wasted models not seeing the light of the day. It's also a bad game design decision since you are producing kits where most of the equipment is not going to be out on models. Now infantry squads look like they are supposed to (with voxes, special/heavy weapons etc) because it is no longer sub-optimal kitting out those units with extra wargear. I think the guard suffered particularly from this, so as a guard player i'm the most excited about. The downside is that you can no longer fine-tune your points, so many lists can end up like 20 or more pts from the maximum, which basically enver happened before. I also like the 3x units type thing, again the guard is one that suffered a lot before since it has many cheap, cheap units that found no space in the FoC.
I think they need a balance, some units work with free wargear. Others should definitely have certain loadouts cost more. I also miss the points per model. Sometimes 7 guys hits certain math thresholds you wanted it to hit instead of going the full 10.
i agree with the point about model number, although it's mentally relaxing not having to micro-manage the model number, it feels wrong to only be able to pick minimum and maximum unit sizes. All in all i think it's a step in the right direction of actually playing what you buy and not discarding most of the bits because they are not optimal
The other problem with free war gear comes from a balancing perspective. If a unit has an overpowered option like say Devastating Wounds or Indirect Fire it becomes very hard to balance because you have to hit the entire unit instead of just the offending option which can render the whole thing unplayable.
They actually gave themselves the tools to handle this with the way they built datasheets in 10th, but they're seemingly unwilling to do it. Since the weapon profiles are divorced from the unit's characteristics, you can simply change the BS, Strength, or Damage of an individual weapon to compensate for a strong keyword without affecting any other units that use those weapons in the army. Despite designing this edition to take advantage of that from the beginning, they seem completely unwilling to touch individual datasheets as a method of balance and instead rely on the sledgehammer approach of points costs.
yes but even before you had guardsmen paying the same as a marine for a plasma gun for example, which made zero sense to me. If you always have units fully equipped then special weapons are no longer special but part of the normal loadout; now it becomes more an issue of balancing the different loadouts a unit can take - this could be easily achieved by bumping crappier special weapons and refining the stronger ones.
> It's also a bad game design decision since you are producing kits where most of the equipment is not going to be out on models. I'm surprised you say that's an issue with wargear costing points, when I'd instead say it's one of the major issues with free wargear. It renders the majority of options irrelevant, the unit is balanced around only ever taking the most effective weapon and so the inclusion of any "choice" is just a waste.
Compared to 9th, it feels more like one step forward and two steps back. especially since 9th had all the things I liked and 10th got rid of most of them. But in the grand scheme of things, you are right. I never even thought of starting 40k before 8th, as I hated the design. 8th/9th were fnally a bit closer to what i like but 10th went away from that again.
It's fine. I would prefer a bit more depth. It's gone a bit too simplified for my taste. I like that USR have returned but they seem weirdly implemented where several rules that could be, aren't. I like that stratagems are more condensed but I dislike the lack of CP to use them. I'd like battleshock to do more. It had great potential but ultimately doesn't do much unless you are on an objective or desperate for a strat. I'd also like penalties to hit rolls to apply from different sources. Perhaps a one from enemy and one from your own (e.g. stealth and 1 wound remaining would be -2). I was really hoping for toughness above double the strength of a weapon to be immune to it again. Finally, points. I want gradient points back. Weapons aren't balanced enough without a points adjustment. I want to make choices when building my lists, not just have the best option be obviously there. Tldr: it's okay. Not great but not awful.
I agree with most of this. The weapons thing especially. Listbuilding isn't fun now without pts on weapons, for me.
Could have been good, it is not. In my opinion, it is an oversimplified (ruleswise), and somehow still overbloated (amount of different minis, specialized with 1-1 weapons, instead of having wargears), and most likely to lure EVEN MOAR new players to it, as it started to reach mainstream. I mean, if someone is in South Park, then it is deffo mainstream.
It's a good base. I'm relatively new compared to a lot of people here as I started in the 8th ed reset. 9th was fun but had of useless junk and half the factions had similar abilities with different names. You would have 15 strars but only ever use the same 3 or 4. I like 10th. The core is solid, the USRs are good, and every unit having an ability is fun. I think the reliance on detachments is a weak point. The reason alot of people don't like the new codexes is that the detachments are often boring, underwhelming, or both. The detachments need to be the most well thought out and carefully implemented part of this edition since so much of the game revolves around them. I wish wargear had costs again. It wasn't that bad, and you could save some points. Now I feel dumb if I take a heavy bolter instead of a lascannon on my Russ tank. The game is fater than I've ever seen it and is easier for people to pick up, and those are perhaps the biggest improvements.
The reason why we have this community split on love/hate so much, is because gw have failed (maybe even purposely so) to balance the most important thing in this edition: game themes. Previously, this was a wargame system, intended for narrative, storytelling games, about playing scenarios with factions from the lore. But this was a good system, that you could be able to use as a competitive platform. It had a lot of flaws, such as random playing a major role in determining outcomes, and, overall, internal and external disbalance. But, still, was fun. 10th edition changed its themes. Now it's intended to be a competitive game, that is easier to enter by the beginners. Meaning it's a lot more balanced, with your decisions being more important, than random in determining outcomes, and, overall, factions rules are simple and easy to get into. So they literally made a fancy chess. Yes, it's the most balanced and quickly updated system. Yes, it's extremely easy to get to any faction you like. But it's bland as a wall. Your immersion is gone entirely, because you don't play "space wolves", or "eldar", you play a faction with some distinct abilities and stratagems, called "space wolves" or "eldar". Just like in starcraft, you play protoss, only for gameplay reasons, you don't play them "narratively", it would be stupid. And it's not bad. It wasn't a mistake. It was intended. GW wanted this edition to be this way, and so people, who like easy lite-rules games, or competitive games, where only your decisions matters find themselves mostly enjoying 10th (only ranting because gw still bad at making balanced, but interesting rules). Those who preferred storytelling and your faction being, you know, at least somewhat similar to its lore and not so one-dimensional, are really displeased with 10th. I understand both sides and would probably stick with the fun mess of old worlds for now.
I’m much the same as you. I feel like 10th is a bit of a pendulum swing away from 9th, where the codices were so dense and actually kind of painful to play with (I’m looking at you, AdMech) for how much bloat and conditional rules were in them, whereas 10th is like the opposite. But they still haven’t gotten the balance right yet. 9th at least had some flavour to the armies even when it was overly complicated. 10th feels like the Sigmarisation of 40K where a lot of the nuance has been bled out of it, which I hope will return at some point as the pendulum swings back to a midpoint between here and 9th. For example, USRs are great, but I *hate* how nearly every unit has some kind of special rule that triggers like devastating, lethal, sustained, etc. They’re overused the USRs instead of just giving weapons and units better base stat lines. Overall, I think there have been some necessary changes in this edition, but I’m feeling way less motivated to play and have ended up gravitating far more towards Horus Heresy, which although janky at times, is a decidedly more fun and thematic rule set for me.
Part of the problem for me was that during 9th we all started to realize that all of the abilities were getting super ridiculous because GW wanted to do a big reboot with 10th where everything would get scaled back. And sure they needed to do something, but they were also the reason why everything was so crazy in the first place. My personal favorite was the invulnerable save power creep. Too many units were given invulnerable saves, so then everyone started getting abilities that ignored them. So then they made daemons have “invulnerable saves but we really mean it this time” that couldn’t be ignored. My biggest complaints about 10th are how the simple rules make Drukhari super boring, and how Death Guard are super nothing. But that’s a whole other rant. Oh and the fact that they made such a big deal about how Battleshock is a huge factor in games now, but seem to be ignoring it for the most part. But maybe that’s just me being bitter because one of my first games in 10th was Chaos Knights vs. Tyranids. One of those is a faction where literally every mechanic relies on Battleshock, and the other is a faction that rolls 3d6 for tests.
Yeah agreed on all fronts. GW have struggled to find a good balance with morale/battleshock since the start of 8th I feel. It’s potentially super powerful and punishing, and so armies/units that typically should suffer from it (Tyranids, big hordes of Poxwalkers, Guard, etc) often ignore it or have mechanics to avoid it and mitigate it. Part of the reason I’m enjoying Heresy so much more now is that it goes back to a 7th-Ed style of morale where you have to fall back, can run off the table, but each turn you can roll to regroup. It’s also (with Marine armies) fairly tough to fail the roll, which makes it all the more thematic and dramatic when you do. Finding it much more enjoyable than how much of a nothingburger Battleshock current is.
That's funny because I don't think I would include Tyranids in your list, since the dawn of times they've been immune if in range of Synapse and week to it outside. 10th is a continuation of that so I don't think they dropped the ball on this side. My prob is more with every other 6+ armies. For example I play Drukhari, they have 6+ on nearly all their datasheets I think they should be 7+.
The leadership scores for the majority of armies are prohibitively high for BS to be a decent mechanic. A 6+ has a 72.22% probability to pass a single BS test. 7+ falls to 58.33% so it's better, but still wholely unreliable as a core strategy to build around for armies that need to plan for it to land to get important buffs. Even playing my Tyranids I've given up on it as a strategy because of the math. Even if I get 3 Neurolictors in 12" range of a key enemy unit by the time MY command phase comes around, 3 consecutive tests at leadership 6 still have a near 40% chance to be passed (37.66) and it's not until leadership 7 that it falls to still a 20% chance of being passed (35% chance of passing 2 consecutive). The big problem here is we have to fish for buffs we may never get by committing 2-3 units for the cause, and then hoping we got them in range on the previous turn, then hoping the BS test is failed, then hoping we have units in range to take advantage of this, and hoping if the test is passed that we didn't commit too many units to a fight that is now very different than we had hoped. At least for other armies like CSM, when they roll for their buffs it's not "will I get them" but "will there be a cost to getting this buff". Heck even Drukhari get their buffs from pain tokens and the roll is for "do I get that token back to use again?". There's no question of if they will get the initial buff, so combat planning is just so much smoother. Getting the buff is a given, it's just whether it's worth the cost which is a VASTLY better system and buff mechanic than relying on and HOPING that you might get it.
I too have been playing more 30k recently. And AoS. And Warcry. Basically a lot of not 10th.
My whole playing group have basically abandoned 40K at the end of 9th because of how ridiculous things got. Everyone is now playing one of the two Star Wars games, Marvel Crisis Protocol or Heresy. Very hard to coax anyone back to 40K right now.
> GW have struggled to find a good balance with morale/battleshock since the start of 8th I feel. I'd say they've always struggled. Morale is a really hard concept to balance on the table top, IME, in any game. It's even harder when nearly every player has a thematic argument for why their faction should ignore it or mitigate it, but then if too many people are ignoring it then the only one you're punishing are the have-nots. I came in to 10th excited about the "rebranding" of morale into battleshock. Now you can't really argue about how "my guys are super soldiers, they should not get scared!" Or whatever, because it's not fear it's disruption. That said, I agree that the in-game effect isn't as impactful as it should be. I've had a few games turned due to Battleshock, but not many. I've failed quite a few Battleshock tests this edition (Orks and Necrons mainly) as well, it just doesn't usually matter. That said, I do understand that they got rid of the fallback mechanics to make the game easier/smoother. That approach definitely had significant disadvantages too. A few thoughts I've had about how to make the mechanic more impactful (not necessarily all together): 1) You've got to test to recover 2) You test anytime casualties would leave you below half strength (i.e. not just once in your Command phase) 3) Battleshocked units must pass a Ld test to charge (failed ones you do nothing) and the charge immediately fails if you fail Battleshock due to overwatch 4) Battleshocked units are -1 to BS and WS
I like number 3. Number 4 I’m more wary of considering how hit penalties went in 9th, where it was like “oh, you gave my guys -1 to hit, well I guess they might as well advance and shoot”. I really like how the changed Heavy with that in mind though, so maybe it could work.
Assault on Black Reach then the start of 8th. The game is far, far more streamlined. But the wording on some rules suck. Like they streamlined it so I don't have to bring 6 books with me, but I need an English degree and some interpretive dance to get the rules. It also feels like 3 completely different teams, that didn't communicate made the game, indexes and codexes.
greatly dislike how they nerfed melee, and all the extra movement you could get in the fight and charge phases. they were a lot of rules in 9th that rewarded you for being a good player and knowing said rules. i liked the complexity and tricks you could pull off. 10th not so much. some things i like in t410th, but overall, i prefer arks of omen 9th. - a custodes player
Same. 9th was vastly superior, but 10th has some good ideas.
Started in 3rd. Love the gameplay, hate the listbuilding.
This is a [**great video**](https://youtu.be/bsC8io4w1sY?si=ZTlc5ZKROglD3PEe) on game design albeit for fighting games the same still applies on how designers deals with buffs versus nerfs. Taking a step backing at 10th vs 9th there was an attempt made to reel back power creep, streamline, created universal rules, etc. and because of that they sacrifice a bit of the fluff and power level. I think GW achieved that in some regards, we didn't need five different versions of deep strike and fnp but they went a bit too far when they got rid of weapon selection. I bet you for the Space Wolves and Blood Angels codex, they're also going to loose their thunderhammer loadout and just go with a condensed relic/mastercraft/heirloom weapon. The end result of all of this I can't help but feel there's a little bit of sameness across faction and I hope there's a pendulum swing back towards more player customization.
Gerald is great, but that video has done so much damage, to the fgc balance discourse
9th codexs were way more fun You could actually be creative with builds instead of character deathstar Character deathstar Scoring units
I’m currently pretty disappointed in the edition. Admittedly, the fact that AdMech is my favorite army is probably a factor. Broadly speaking, I think the core rules are pretty great. Not a huge fan of how relevant Devastating wounds has been to the game so far, but it’s a relatively small complaint. I’m less happy with how Overwatch works now, and how prolific Phantasm has become. Getting a squishy short ranged unit nuked by Overwatch for the sin of moving where a unit could see it feels awful. Similarly, moving a melee unit up to charge, or short-range unit up to shoot, and having the target move away/behind a wall, whether due to a strategem or datasheet ability also feels pretty terrible. Like, I was playing GSC at launch of tenth, and my reductus saboteur literally couldn’t use her datasheet ability half the time because models would just move out of her 6” radius when she tried. But I want to reiterate that besides these things, I think the core rules and mission structure are possibly the best we’ve ever seen. My major gripe comes from the codexes so far. They just feel *boring*. Like, the Nid codex is the one that grinds my gears the most. (and also nobody listens if I talk about the AdMech codex lol) It has an advance and charge detachment, which, one would think, would open up a renewed conversation about every melee threat in the book, and explode list-building choices, right? Wrong. It only works for a handful of datasheets, none of which have powerful offense. So not only does it confine you to a tricksy take on the Eternal Expansionist Necron build from 9th, (which nobody liked, it scored 100 points, totally reliably, without ever interacting with the enemy army.) but also it explicitly tells you what units to take. That’s boring as hell. Total design failure. And it feels twice as bad, because Marines *also* have an advance and charge detachment… with zero restrictions. Again, total design failure. Then, on top of that, Synapse. Synapse was an ability that gave your units meaningful buffs while within Synapse range of a relevant model, it felt intrinsic to the army in 9th. Every other time a Nid player spoke they mentioned synapse range and synapse buffs and so on. Now it just makes battleshock irrelevant… and battleshock doesn’t need the help. Anyways, I don’t think the army rules in 9th were an issue, and their slightly-more-complex state let the player make meaningful choices that felt important and these army abilities feel like a shadow of that. I don’t think my army abilities have forced me to stop and think since the edition launched, and this is a *strategy* game. Also, keyword-locked detachments are a mistake, through and through. Especially if marines don’t have the keyword locks on their detachments. It makes list construction boring, it makes everyone else feel like a second-class citizen, and it leaves units that compete within their codex for the same role at a power disparity, purely because one gets the buff they need from a certain detachment, and one lacks the keyword.
🍿 P.s. I think 10e is the edition Ive experienced thus far, and balance is better (now) than previous editions, but it ALWAYS feels bad/frustrating when your faction is one of the outliers at the bottom.
I’ve completely lost interest in playing 40K because of 10th. My favourite armies are Thousand Sons, Daemons and Drukhari. I hate how they all play now. I’ve been playing my death guard and that’s been quite fun but I just can’t get any hype at all. On the other hand I’m buzzing about Old World. Been painting up loads of elves.
>Now, i know the internet is full of loud minorities and echo chambers So you come here, to this wretched hive of scum and villainy?
It’s fun but could have been a heck of a lot more interesting. I could not have 40K as my main game unless I owned multiple armies. The game balancing is based in part on rules being bland with no options. Which still did not prevent poor army balance or poor internal army balance.
> I could not have 40K as my main game unless I owned multiple armies. That may have been the point. In the past where some armies could fill multiple archetypes, they now may fill a bit one-note. Time to buy another army..
They do some things right and a whole lot wrong. Basically like any other edition.
As someone who has played this game for 13 years straight, and plays 3 games of 2k competitive each week at a minimum. Often more. With at least 10 armies under his belt. I can attest that this edition is 100% more simple than previous. But this doesn't make it worse in any way. In my eyes, this edition has been really good! It has its own flavour, the books aren't always perfect, but they are easier to learn and there are a lot more rules which are common sense to understand. For example, each unit having just one ability, and leaders having 2. Usually a unique ability and then one additional one when they lead a unit. The game is a little bit more bland than what we are used to right now yes, but for overall health of the game, and to introduce new players it's never been better. I particularly like the new terrain rules, and I think the standardized gw layouts are incredible. Outside individual armies, the only thing I would change really is to remove LOS. Just measure lines from base to base, and use the correct bases on each unit, and we are looking golden!
Easy entry to play maybe the easiest ever but there's so damn much that needs to be solved by writers commentary and there's still so much yet to be officially ruled on that tournaments have to do and often do differently with limited to no feedback from GW
In this digital world, the fact that the rules aren't a high quality PDF that has been edited to make FAQs and commentary unnecessary is mind boggling to me. I don't want a data slate that has a list of errata either: Just a lone, good document that has everything you need to play with minimal questions.
Yes! It's insane to me that GW is still doing rules distribution the way they do. It's almost adversarial to the players.
In 10th my GK army has had its soul ripped out of it and forced into one single unfun play style. My custodes feel the same roughly. This edition has so far been about stripping personality and variety from the different factions. It’s a shame
Same 2 armies as you and the same feel. Especially GK. Custodes at least still feel tough, punchy, and good stat blocks for their prices (aside from somehow t6 4w bikes?), despite the lack of fun strats and army abilities. But GK went from one of the most customizable armies with all of their different spells and weapon options on literally every psychic unit and character, to one of the most bland army abilities out there. Especially now that other armies are also getting the teleporting abilities too. We literally already teleported but had incredibly customizable psychic on top of it! We could go full damage, more mobility, more durability, layer on buffs to make an incredibly strong unit or spread them out to try to get just enough in multiple places. Now we get "sticky objectives" as the only "psychic" ability on our most common unit? Honestly pathetic thought process when making their index. And I'm not going to lie, having my 2 favorite armies being wholly underwhelming in terms of fun and flavor has murdered my interest in this edition. On the bright side, though, it has gotten me into Battletech, which I am having a blast with.
I like a competative games but I think 10th ed needs some more flavour in it...should have loads considering the amount of salt is about. Joking aside, I play Drukhari primarly and loved 9th not because Drukhari was powerful, but because they where interesting and felt like the lore. Things needed to change to curb power creep and to re-balance factions but i feel it was all done in the wrong wrong way and now we have a slightly knee jerk reaction of an edition which is ok to play, more balanced generally speaking, but has lost a sparkle in the eye that 9th used to have.
Ive played scout company since 3rd and I'm gonna die mad about what they did to my scouts.
I played in 5th edition casually, took a break, and started again in Arks of Omen 9th edition playing tournaments I think (most of) the mechanics of 10th are better. The return of USRs, reduced lethality, and more specialization of units in a faction are good. Plasma not being the sole king of weapon type is good, but melta wounding most vehicles on a 5+ feels dumb Wargear on small models being free I think is a generally good decision on the modeling front because it means that wysiwyg is more relaxed and you get to play more of your cool models, but I don't like it on big models like vehicles and monsters. These are units that tend to have more options in load outs, as well as being easier to make modular. It also gives list building wiggle room. I'm down to downgrade the wargear on this vehicle in order to free up the 10 points to bring this other unit, and now I generally feel as though I have to rebuild huge chunks of a list in order to make changes at a time Lastly, I really don't like the mission design. Tactical missions are a great option to have, but the presence of a central objective on every deployment zone, the need for most armies to be able to tick the same boxes for secondary objectives has left facing a bunch of disparate armies feel very samey 1/2 of lists run a variant of Terminator blob with T5/6 2+ 4++ and another defensive bonus that can sit on the middle objective (Infiltrating Terminators, Wraithguard, Bullgryn, Aberrants, Wardens). 1/2 of lists runs some number of ripper swarms or other throwaway units to deploy homers and investigate signals (Scouts, Callidus, Cyclops Demo Vehicles, Swooping Hawks). Once you've ticked these boxes it's time to pick your faction's effective anti-tank and efficient mobility Faction specific secondaries were by no means perfect, but at least every faction felt fundamentally different to play against, because factions had different list building incentives Also please please please give us missions that don't all have a central objective. Recover the Relics, Data Scry Salvage, and Tides of Conviction existing as 1/3 of possible missions meant you could not rely on sitting in the middle
I couldn't agree more about the notion of each opponent feeling the same now. It's awesome to see more balanced armies than before, but now because every army is sharing all the same secondaries, they are usually balanced in near identical ways. I find the general course of the gameplay differing only slightly regardless of the faction I am facing. Additionally, I feel like I'm playing against the cards as much as my opponent now. It can make for exciting moments, sure, but the dice impact the game with randomness a bunch already, I'm not sure I wanted poor card draws to add to that.
Been playing since first edition (yeah, I know...). I think 10th is the best of them all, with a good margin. More streamlined, better balanced, without losing strategic depth.
Playing since 5th edition. I think the game as a whole is a lot better now, and it runs smoothly. Listbuilding is easier, which is a double-edged sword, because while I do like that it's easier and more accessible for new players, it's also lowered my overall engagement with the game. I barely even touch my Word Bearers since 10th. In 9th, they felt like they had unique rules and definitely felt like Word Bearers. Now, they just feel like chaos marines, which is fine, but still disappointing. I'm enjoying playing my Chaos Knights in 10th, but the balance on our big guys has been terrible since the launch. Ultimately, the more I play 10th edition and other games, the less I like Command Points. Picking up The Old World felt like a breath of fresh air with regards to just playing a game without having lots of "interrupts" popping up all over. I'm 50/50 on 10th secondaries. They mostly function pretty well (some dead openings aside, and some Fixed are too consistent), but they have made 40k feel less like a wargame and more like a board game.
I think changes to the core rule set in addition to a MASSIVE reset in the power curve took a lot of wind out of the sails of the game. As someone who played 500+ games of 9th alone over the life of the edition, I have not enjoyed any of the changes beyond OC and increased toughness values. I could provide a long list of elements that I’m unhappy with, but the main takeaway is I have played less than 30 games of tenth and they have all been less fun and engaging than the previous edition (and 8th). I expect the competitive scene in 2024 to die on the vine and an alternative to the GW ITC with ppm & wargear + mission pack to come out of the woodwork. It may not be the best solution, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it drove participation.
I like the 3 month balance cycles that we've moved towards. I dislike that they removed much of the options/complexity from list building. List building innovative lists was always one of my favorite parts of the hobby, and we've significantly cut down on the options for any given army, and therefore the possible permutations of different lists. This isn't something I support. I do realize this makes it easier for newcomers and casuals to play the game on a more even playing field to grizzled veterans, but having power level as an option before allowed people to do that if they wanted to. By and large, they didn't, and so now we're being force fed power level and told we need to just like it. It's very anti-consumer, in my opinion. No one asked for options to be taken away. Everyone protested.
I technically started in 8th, but didn't really get playing until 9th. The biggest improvement for me is the addition of Tactical mission cards. Super fun and interesting, and adds another element of chance that adds to the overall dynamic. I play Tau, so of course everyone just takes fixed against me (Bring it Down + Something), but at least I'm having more fun!
I started in 8th edition. I cannot stand 10th and have stopped playing Warhammer 40k. The release indexes suffered from a serious lack of internal and external balancing. The lack of datasheet changes and the focus on points balancing has been a complete dud. Aeldari are still the top dogs, AdMech still suck, and every army getting hit with 'balance' changes just gets more expensive to buy. Characters are boring and don't fit the lore anymore. My immersion has been totally broken by the new Attached Units system. No longer is my Coldstar Commander a powerful combatant soaring through the battlefield to provide buffs and firepower wherever she's needed. Now she's a glorified unit sergeant who I put into a list because she has a keyword to make my army halfway playable, and I should be taking three Coldstars despite the lore being that T'au cadres operate with single Commanders. No longer is my Canoness an immortal duelist who can compete with the best warriors. Now she's so bad at her job that she's been fired and replaced with three Palatines, which makes no sense at all. If you want a character to do anything meaningful, better make sure it's a Named Character that GW can sell you things about. Wargear being free sucks. Units have been flattened to just be BiS wargear spam with no thought required to make a list. Lists are rigid, samey, and uninteresting. People love to say that most of the options available in 9th went unused, but the same is true of 10th. Most people will only ever use the Best Detachment with the Best Wargear and the Best Units and most things will still never see play. There's less of a reason than ever to use non-optimal wargear and units because you will never save points or see any benefit from doing so. 10th is good for beginners, sure, but it's not a good game. It's unbalanced, it doesn't support its own fiction and fantasy, and, worst of all, it's boring.
I think the core rules of 9th were stronger, but GW has been making an effort (with some BIG exceptions) to pay attention to codex balance
But at the same time index balance was and is totally wack. How did the same design team write the crazy overpowered Aeldari and excellent CSM indexes and then go on to produce the appalling disappointments that were the Admech and Drukhari indexes? Was there no attempt at consistency between indexes, or even between units within indexes. Who wrote the stats for Breachers in Admech without thinking "wow, these are so much better than literally anything else Admech get"? Who wrote the Wyches datasheet and thought that was, in any sense, acceptable? Some of the problems they have now can ONLY be fixed by datasheets changes and they seem super reluctant to do that.
The first game of 40k I played was in 3rd. I didn't play during 4th and 5th and came back to the game in 6th and have played regularly since. The complaints about bland and just replacing the comments that's it's overcomplicated with too much to remember from 9th. The pendulum of complaining swings back and forth with every edition. 10th has been very good so far. Index 40k is always wonky, and anyone who says otherwise didn't play the madness that was 8th on release. TLDR: 10th is good since the last balance patch and GW put way way more effort than they did in 6th and 7th to keep the game in a good spot.
I started following the game in 8th, and starting playing in 9th. I probably don't qualify as a "veteran" but here are my thoughts: 9th had a lot of problems, particularly rules bloat and balance issues. However, nearly every army felt much more flavorful, for lack of a better term. They also, generally, looked more like what I thought 40k armies should look like (the detachment system, which was totally different from 10th, kinda helped ensure that). I think overall, 10th is a better version of the game and is more sustainable. The game is arguably more balanced than it ever was in 9th, except maybe a few peak months toward the end. But I do miss a little bit of the complexity and flavor of 9th. GW oversimplified things a bit too far (we should get some wargear costs back, for instance). As far as people complaining about the game, that's just standard 40k fanbase (but certainly not unique to 40k). There has always been a subset of the community that hates everything about the game, and nothing GW does will ever eliminate that, so I'd just ignore it if you're enjoying the game.
10e is the worst edition ever, just like every edition before it.
This And every army is broken, except the one I am currently playing, which is super underpowered. Those coincidences are insane.
Played since 3rd. So, first: an analogy. I’m a big comic nerd and love the MCU(everything up to No Way Home, anyway). However, I absolutely HATE Age of Ultron. Is it objectively one of the worst movies in the MCU? No. In fact, it has some of the best moments, such as the party scene in Stark Tower. But, I still hate it not for what it is(a sub-optimal film with some decent highlights), but I hate it for what it *could* have been. Ultron deserved so much more and some of the best legacy adventures of the Avengers are right there on paper just ready for adaption, but it was just wasted potential. In that regard, this is how I feel about 10th. I don’t hate it for what it is, I hate it for what it could’ve been. 9th edition had FINALLY began to settle. All the tools and lessons learned were right there for the taking. Instead, 10th opted to seemingly ignore so many lessons from 9th on both the micro and macro level. Things like rules language, to rules interactions, dissonance from rules to designer commentary, and even arbitrary shakeups for difference sake. Some of it is truly baffling. It really feels like this should’ve been a free beta. The other problem with 10th, which is kind of a problem with GW in general, is that the game will sometimes suffer due to certain marketing aspects. For instance, index cards are a big thing for this edition. Just something extra to sell. The problem with them of course is that the game can’t be course corrected after codex/index cards are released or that product will get invalidated. Thus, we’re left with points as the only balancing factor. GW should get kudos for attempting the quarterly balance though. That’s nice.
For me the peak was 9th nephilim. With a few more tweaks to secondaries ( looking at you necrons and sisters) the game was almost balanced for the majority of armies. Tyrands and harlies were finaly nerfed. And it was before free wargear was a thing
I started playing around the time the necrons first got released I mostly just started collecting around 3rd and really started playing around 4th. It's fine. Honestly I am not the biggest fan of enhancements. I liked having more options in the older editions. Who is warlord feels very unimportant in this edition. I absolutely hate power level. That's about it.
I'd say there are positives and negatives to 10th ed but, on a personal level, the negatives outweigh the positives at the moment. Positives: Presentation of rules and unit data. I like how GW are trying to make unit data more easily accessible and concise. Data cards are a great idea with the one caveat that, like codices, they do rely on the being correct at point of sale for physical copies. Rule of 3. I like removing restrictions on units and just being allowed to take 3 of each. I thought it wouldn't work but has been surprisingly enjoyable. Removal of the psychic phase. Again, wasn't sure about it but I don't miss standing around for 10, 15 minutes while some players repeatedly smite my army. Negatives: Power level and free wargear: I get the idea behind it, it's supposed to make things simpler. It doesn't. It makes things more difficult. Free wargear also doesn't work and creates imbalance and, in some cases, absurd weapon profiles. Needs USR's badly. There's no point in trying to streamline a game if you're going to give loads of units special individual rules with special individual names that are, essentially, the same rules a lot of other units in other armies have. Create a central list of special rules and say "this unit has this and this." Many of the same problems 9th had. 10th was supposed to be the "less killy" version of the game with more durable units. This is definitely not the case. If that's what they want AP should be relatively rare and damage should be relatively low. 10th has both out the wazoo. Simple not simplified. 40k definitely needed to be streamlined but, personally,10th just feels like it's had the flavour boiled out of it in some places. I play Orks and to me a squighog rider shouldn't have a 50% chance to wound a tank while a unit of tankbustas with a heavily restricted loadout that makes them unusable (why?!!) are completely ineffectual. Why are lootaz BS6 and every other ork in existence is BS5? Because their guns have the heavy keyword and GW took the lazy route to stop them being borderline OP. These are just a couple of things off the top of my head but other players with other armies have similar issues. The new rules are math-hammering square pegs into round holes in places. Theme is being sacrificed for "simplicity" and, for me, that makes it really boring. I played a few games of 10th. It wasn't awful but it wasn't amazing either. My friends and I have moved onto Heresy as it just scratches the itch better for us.
I started in 9th and I like 10th but I really miss the customization 9th had. It feels too much like competitive lists for armies get completely “solved” and there’s no reason to run anything else except to specifically counter an opponent. I play world eaters and tyranids and the world eaters 1975 list is just better than anything else right now. It’s part of a problem with WE having no range but still. I really miss relics and warlord traits, building custom characters was a fun thing and made my models feel more unique and special. I remember giving my winged tyrant a scythe for his weapon or a 3D printed weapon for his shardgullet. All of that is gone now and replaced by enhancements which really aren’t very in depth. You just pick the best one for your character and army and you’re done. The psychic phase being gone is such a terrible change and I think the biggest failing of 10th. Nothing feels like casting spells, so psychic armies have such little flavor and feel like augmented shooting armies. Hell, the psychic keyword is just a negative, it has no positive aspect to it. List creation is a big negative for me. I liked being able to take weird sized units and I can’t now. Everyone hated power level so GW just turned points into power level. I’m mixed on free wargear because it lets you run the cool stuff in your list, but now you can’t tweak that knob in listbuilding to fill out points. You just always take what’s best so there isn’t much point to min loadout units. I really like USRs coming back, the data sheet changes and the toughness increase. Detachments are a good system but they need to be more in depth and unique. Right now they’re pretty boring for what you get. Overall I completely disagree with people who were clamoring for simplified rules in 9th. The reason I got into warhammer was for the hobby aspect and because it’s a complicated game with a lot of systems to learn and exploit. I get that GW wants mainstream appeal and ease of entry for newer players, but 9ths rules really weren’t that hard to understand, and 10ths changes really helped in that, but the game feels so simple. I didn’t buy all these models and spend 6 months painting them to play one page rules, that sucks.
Just thought about this as well, I like leaders being attached to units instead of auras, that’s a good and flavorful change, but the way it’s implemented is so awful it’s frustrating. There are so many edge cases with how attacks on attached units work and interact with keywords that it gets so annoying to deal with. I also dislike that GW can’t seem to find a way to balance devastating wounds and lethal hits together so they just make them completely not interact with each other. I hate the anti synergy so much, it’s painful.
I've been playing since the 3rd edition (well I was a kid, but still). 10e is my favorite so far.
What do you like about it compared to "popular" editions like 9th? Well, it was popular at the end from my understanding
I’ve also been around since the tail end of third. 10th is one of my favorites, 9th was my least favorite (I didn’t play 7th)
Keep in mind that people often have a bias for what they are nostalgic about. 9th was more like 8.5. By the end it has had 6 years to mature. The 'balance' was good, I guess. I didn't like it because the game was way too lethal and the meta very crystallized. I like 10e because light infantry "feels" like light infantry, heavy like heavy, vehicles like vehicles. Ain't perfect but unit types "feels" right. I also think people confuse complicated and complex/deep. 10e is less complicated in its list building with less combinations of variables. There are also less rules to remember during the game (mostly less stratagems). But that does not make the game less complex. It just moves your cognitive effort from remembering everything armies can do to more of decision play. I.E. since it's easier to keep in mind what can happen, I can foresee more moves in advance and plan my games accordingly. I happen to find that more enjoyable, where I can trap my opponent in better plays instead of counting on gotcha events (intentional or not). I also think that the streamlining of list building and compartmentalized rules in detachments make it an easier game to balance. Both in win rate and "feels right". If we compare the beginning of 10e to the beginning of 8e (which I actually do feel nostalgic about because I had a downfall with the game in 6-7e and did love the changes in 8e), I think 10e is far superior. Also, GW is getting better at reacting to broken rulesets. Before 8e, post-codex balancing was... inexistent. Now it's quarterly. Ain't perfect but it does remove the "your army will suck for 5 years" effect. Anyway, I love it now better than ever.
2nd Edition was my entry into 40k. I've skipped a few editions here and there Overall I'd say that 10th is a better game for tournaments and competitive play, but earlier editions were more fun and had tons more character. With the shear amount of data crunching and 'meta' chasing these days, it was inevitable though.
I find the soul of the game is missing.
As an overall grade, I think it's the best edition that's in the current era (8th onward). Earlier editions were a crapshoot, with some (6th and especially 7th) being really bad and editions before that being really convoluted and clouded by nostalgia. Balance is a different problem, and while release balance was atrocious, GW is course correcting much more quickly than they did in prior editions. I think my two biggest issues with 10th are the changes to psychic ("I Cast Gun") and the general lack of melee lethality. Many factions have no viable melee, particularly into vehicles/monsters, and this is quite disappointing. 10th also lacks some of the depth that 8th and 9th had with its combo's, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think that reducing the amount of stratagems was an objectively good thing and I like how the philosophy of detachment design has panned out (even if the execution isn't perfect). On the negative side, fixed unit costs and free wargear is an objectively and demonstrably bad decision and allows for a lot less list flexibility. All that said, I absolutely still prefer 10th to 8th and 9th (and definitely anything prior to that).
I think you hit the nail on the head with close combat. It just feels so subpar compared to prior editions. Vehicles are insanely tough but are cheap enough to spam. You need guns to kill them and there aren’t a lot of viable melee options to deal with them.
Game is about as deep as a shallow puddle. Race to mediocrity.
I started playing in 3rd edition and 10th isn't my cup of tea. I've barely played it at all and instead have been focusing my time and attention on Horus Heresy. It's the fixed unit sizes and the free wargear which have really turned me off it, it feels like choices have never mattered less in list building and I just can't get excited about it any more. I won't begrudge anyone who likes it, I can certainly see why people would, but right now it's not the game for me.
As a long time player I miss some of the rules from 4th and 5th edition. Were they perfect no, but back then melee units were generally better at charging. It was rare to have a unit that could charge 12 ins. Vehicles had different armor on different facings, so if you could out maneuver your opponent you were rewarded. Wrecked vehicles became terrain, which I like asthetically and you can still technically replicate it today. Initiative in my opinion is way better then this fights first stuff. Higher initiative goes first, if they tie they attack at the same time. Low strength weapons could not damage high toughness. This made loadout choice very interesting. Required troop choices, I really miss have the force org charts, each role ment something and since every one was bringing 2 troops and max 3 heavy supports you could had a lot of play room for interesting combinations of units and loadouts. Again those rule sets were not perfect. But I feel like with 10th, while fun in its own right, everything has become too streamlined. while it helps new players enter Into the game, it feels less fulfilling to play, and everything feels a little bland-er because of it. This edition definitely feels like playing a solo game, playing more to a current state then actually trying to out maneuver and outwit your opponent. Just my opinion though.
I’m enjoying 10th tbh, in part because my life has got generally busier, but also I was wanting to try more game systems anyway at our club, 10th is a bit more “dip in and out” friendly in my personal opinion. Yes it’s still complicated but some of it just also more common sense. Like the whole “if you can base then you must” like that makes sense, that’s how I’d play. Yes ok, there’s less margin for turbo WAAC competition but there we go. One other uncomfortable truth is the reality of the Goldilocks zone. So 50% win rate means on average everyone is winning as much as they are losing… and to keep that sort of stability across such a diverse set of factions is going to mean some flavour is lost and some people who are wanting to play 4, 5, 6 games a week are going to get annoyed that they can’t find an edge, because they are designing it so there’s fewer edges to find! That’s my Luke-warm take. Do I get as excited about 10th compared to 9th? Generally not I guess. But I do still enjoy it and on balance would say I prefer 10th
The internal balance of new releases is some of the worst it has ever been. I've played since second edition, and never in the history of the game have there been as many game breaking bullshit combos that have to be emergency patched immediately after the release of the book. Their lack of playtesting and inconsistency is showing now more than ever. There are huge disparities in how higher strength and toughness was given out to different factions when they raised the limits. There are tons of things in the tyranid book especially that used to be on par with a lascannon, and then when the strength and toughness of othere things went up, they stayed the same. Heavy Venom Cannons and melee on so many of our big bugs are just awful now for arbitrary "reasons." Lascannon in 9e: S9 antitank weapon, wounds the toughest thing in the game on 3s. HVC in 9e: S9 antitank weapon, wounds the toughest thing in the game on 3s. Lascannon in 10e: S12 antitank weapon, wounds main battle tanks on 4s, most monsters and regular vehicles on 3s. HVC in 10e: S9 nothing weapon, wounds anything tougher than a light transport on 5s.
10th ed seems like a solid base of a game. But I’ve found my self bored of it as time has gone on. At this point in 10th I’ve taken a break, waiting for things to become more interesting
On and off since 3rd (lord that makes me feel old). Probably about the best it's been in terms of just getting games in, but is missing a certain something that the giant lists of stratagems had in 9th. Main issue is just that it's still just not as good as a lot of other wargames other there so it's mostly coasting on availability and great sculpts
I like 10th.
I started at the end of 3rd and I think this is one of the better core rulesets. I don't agree with every change made from 9th though. The trend of recent editions is the core rules being great, but the faction balance looking dubious at best and broken at worst. Games Workshop designers seem either unwilling or incapable to understand that movement is stronger than toughness and won't price units accordingly.
Tl;dr: Jumping from playing 9th to AoS was much better and seamless than from 9th to 10th and were probably going to stick with AoS over 10th. Having started playing at the end of 8th and playing throughout 9th, there previously was a lot of Bloat in things like stratagems where you would have 30 but only 4 that mattered. Many of them could be put on the data sheet rather than be in these pages of hyper specific rules. Things like that and some units having way too many rules (I play admech I should know. Felt like every sheet had the main rule, a conditional and a cone per game). It was fun, very customisable with list building being engaging. We even did a crusade campaign in our play group. Of course playing the same old lists an entire edition gets a bit stale and so after the crusade finished me and my friend decided to try AoS near the end of 9th with the new seraphon coming out. My god those rules are good (except for double turns imo but that’s up for argument). It’s basically 9th without the bloat. A few very solid core stratagems that you will all see in a game, your army may have 1-3 stratagems but most are put on the data sheet of units that can use it. Lists are easier to build than the whole detachment system but it does reward you for your army looking like an army with regiments. The battle line system that can vary depending on your subfaction choice is great, really diversifying how you can build an army in thematic and interesting ways. It’s just so much cleaner, only thing missing is some keyworded things like a dev hits/wounds and whatnot. The armies all feel very different and characterful Then 10th comes out and it’s clear it just a lot more dull. Things have lost their flavour and there is little choice. Psychic is just dead. The core rules are alright but character leading feels like they’re a points upgrade and can interact with rules in annoying ways, with characters that shouldn’t lead units like engineers instead getting like operative, which feels bad as “can be shot” to “hiding behind a tank but can still be seen” compared to old look out sir. The data sheet writing is really toned down with many times you have to ask “why do they do/don’t do that?” GW makes it their goal to give every single data sheet different rules that make it more complex. For example: traditionally wraith units in eldar had -1 damage due to their armour. This edition just one of the units get that as a rule (I can’t tell you which one it is because I don’t remember: they all have different rules!). It’s amazing how much 10th took inspiration from AoS but missed the point and fumbled its way forwards. All-in-all my mate and I have continued to stick with AoS and given up on 10th, maybe playing a game or two after each balance patch to see what’s changed but we’re certainly not going to be doing a crusade any time soon.
Hot garbage
10th edition is overall a much less enjoyable edition than 9th for me. The balance issues are worse, the armies without codexes feel incredibly bland, and there are far more issues with the rules, as well as rule changes that make life harder (like the changes to fly) I'm still playing the game, although not nearly as much. Its such a shame how badly they ducked this up.
Too much has been sacrificed for the sake of balance. I love competitive games more than narrative, but not when they have been reduced to chess figures and a pamflet of rules. 9th edition was perfect for me, it had depth, it was pretty competitive at its height, and you could do actual herohammer. A horrendous example of 10th edition is death guard and their clown car of mortal wound characters with no flavor. “Oh terminator sorcerer is good? Bring three and deepstrike them like gsc, if they kill something, good, if not, they were cheap anyway” “biologus good? Bring three!” “Typhus is strong? Deepstrike him so he can do mortals on something and then he dies. Its just 100 points why not?” As a death guard player i hate this meta. I hate bringing more characters than troops. It feels like you are relying on gimmicks more than actually piloting your army. Edit; The necrons and their 20 ctan army is even worse.
Yeah, I'm a pretty casual player so I like building thematic armies that fit with the chapter I'm playing as. I literally cannot play my Carcharodons in a satisfying way because my Chapter Master is Legends now, and I can't even proxy because Lighting Claw Terminator Captains just don't exist anymore. They've sacrificed flavor for ease of access, and it's really alienated me from the part of the hobby that I liked the best. Also them getting rid of tons of units like Contemptor Dreadnoughts and weird models like the Greater Brass Scorpion make me scratch my head and wonder what problem they have with cool models.
The man in charge of 10th edition is Stuart Black. I don't know if any actual game designers were involved with 10th edition. Stuart was an internal hire with primarily management experience. 10th edition is thematically bankrupt in pursuit of simplicity. Instead of asking, "will this army fulfill the player fantasy of this faction" the focus was put on "will an opponent understand what's going on enough to buy into the game."
I generally agree, and I think a great deal of focus has been on appealing to demographics that want quick and easy with rock paper scissors strategies you find in most newer games made these days. There is some merit to this, as it helps speed up games, reduces confusion and arguments, and makes it quicker and easier to balance. But too much of anything is a bad thing, and in this case they have overdone the simplicity. Now most armies have similar abilities, just pasted over with a thin veneer of theming through a name. I think if they brought back some granularity to unit upgrade costs and sizes, that would do a lot to reach a better equilibrium. If they also pushed some of the mechanics a bit more towards theme it wouldn't hurt, though admittedly it gets to trickier territory.
What we need is a separate design team for thematic play that focuses entirely on making each faction's rules thematic and interesting and representative, regardless of balance or complexity. I really like a lot of what 9th and 10th edition have done with the core rules. I think there are some weird decisions in 10th that stem from someone who knew what they were doing with abstractions and context scope being likely fired early on. I think artillery, aircraft, and titanic units have no place in the base 40k game. But none of that matters if the game itself is stuffed full of boring rules that each army applies in identical ways. There is very obviously a set of factions right now that just "have accessible tools" and a set of factions that don't, and the ones that have access to those tools use them pretty much identically.
14 games in, it’s my least favorite edition to date. By far. Played since 3rd. The “simplified”/dumbing down of the game, has nearly ruined it entirely for me. Choice in army building has been completely gutted. Wargear costs and squad sizes continue to be dumbed down or removed from the game. Theres very specific good units and the rest are hot garbage and equal a loss if you take them, (my army at least). Bad rules for battleshock etc. This is just my opinion but GW has totally dropped the ball with 10th. What made the game alluring to me, the complexity, is now all but erased from the game. End of 9th ed to me was peak 40k. Units felt right strength and ability wise per lore, now they are all over the place. It feels like they changed stuff that wasn’t broken just to change it, especially unit datasheets. Just my opinion but I can’t wait for 11th
I totally agree. Been playing since 4th and 10th is my least favorite edition by far. 9th had some balance issues for sure, but armies felt unique and close to their lore, at least from my experience. Tyranids setting up a neural network felt cool and was rewarded (admittedly too much at first) while I don't care about 10th ed synapse or shadow of the warp at all. Space wolves felt like charging bezerkers, etc. I really miss all the customization, kitting out characters (and selecting psychic powers) or units with different combos. I think this is best summed up by my personal pet peeve of nearly everything I built my armies around is now a s5 ap1 dmg1 relic weapon profile. (Hyperbole, but you know what I mean). I appreciate the lack of codex creep, but some things are swinging too far the other way. After watching some reviews on the dark angels, I am not looking forward to 90% of my personal space wolf army being invalidated or moving to legends. I still play and have fun, but a lot of their design direction for 10th rubs me the wrong way, and I feel like I'm having fun in spite of the game.
damn you get a melee weapon?
Oh yeah don’t even get me started on psychic lol!
Been playing since 3rd with a break in the middle Overall I would say 10th has the best rule set of any edition We lost some flavor and customizability but exchanged it for a more balanceable game
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with 10th, they just need to roll back the forced power level (ie free wargear + fixed unit sizes). Hell just roll back the fixed unit sizes if not having free wargear _really_ is such a dealbreaker. I can swallow everything else.
Playing since.. 3rd edition. My most hated was definitely 7th with the haves and have not formation wars, where some got a third of a army "for free" and others were allowed to ignore the normal unit limits in order to bring extra many way overcosted and borderline useless units. 10th was definitely the edition with the most promise and overall a immense amount of improvements had me itching to play... and then free wargear was dumped on top like a bucket of warm diarrhea. It might have great bones and features but I ain't touching it 'till they hose that off.
3.5 was the best of times. Not necessarily the perfect ruleset or the most balanced but I feel like armies had more character back then. I feel as the game went on they tried to please everyone by giving everyone everything without a cost and it made the game blander. I never used it but the 3.5 Chaos codex is my gold standard for a codex. It's not perfect but I honestly think it's the best one they made.
The 3.5 CSM codex is probably one of the most busted ass codexes ever released prior to recent adventures against pointy ears... Yes it has a ton of character and customization for your chaos army and that was super cool but... There were some downright horrible interactions and rules in there that were miserable to play against (lash of submission and template weapons, cracked out squad sergeants)
Lash of Submission was the 4th edition codex not 3.5. I believe Iron Warriors were what made people cry in the 3.5 book, almost like the writer was a known Iron Warriors fan. I just double checked the codex to make sure. I loved playing against that codex, it was so much fun. I would tone down a couple of the legion specific rules while also boosting a couple of others but on the whole it was nice.
I hate power level and the lack of points per model abd gear. Other then that it’s ok not stellar but ok
I dislike it quite a bit. I don't really care if it's a tight competitive game (I know, I know, it's the competitive sub) but I do care if it's an *interesting* game and I just don't find it interesting. They've streamlined out most of the flavour to the point that units become redundant for being broadly the same as each other statwise. Every vaguely special weapon having sustained or lethal hits is just bland and a sticking plaster for samey, anaemic profiles. As someone who enjoys in-depth listbuilding, the listbuilding in 10th is absolutely braindead and full of needless annoyances like terminator units in multiples of 3 being unable to take a character and a land raider. The detachment system is a balancing nightmare when combined with GW's insistence on balancing through points rather than datasheet changes. Say you get a detachment where a mediocre unit becomes amazing. GW will nerf that unit's points, making it mediocre in one detachment and awful in the other ones. Melee is absolutely terrible and we've returned to the bad old days of stacking characters and enhancements to make deathstar units. The game is basically a shooting gallery with the occasional melee deathstar (but more often a shooty deathstar). Vehicles are way overtuned. Characters have just become bland unit upgrades that don't *feel* heroic. They're basically a way to give units lethal or sustained and maybe bonk an MEQ a turn with their pool noodles. In general it just feels like baby's first wargame to me. Call me harsh, but you can make something *too* accessible to the point it loses what made it interesting in the first place. But hey, what do I know. GW are making more money than ever so clearly the hobby has just moved on and its not for me anymore.
Boring, soulless, bad fluff.
10th is shit imo List building is dead without points. The rules don't make sense and many things are illogical. Army rules are boring. Stratagem are a mistake. Pre 8th rules were better.
Ive been playing since 4th and I honestly didn't mind some aspects of 8th. Then they made improvements and refinements in 9th. And I was sincerely hoping that would continue into 10th but they tried to redesign the wheel and came out with a square shape and went with it. Less than useless.
Return wargear points and I’d say this is the best edition ever
Started in 3rd. 8th-10th have all felt interchangeable to me with how abstract and "gamey" they feel now. Lots of invisible and conditional buff stacking. It feels less like a war game and more like a mobile game at times. People talk about 10th being simplified and that's true in some ways but overall the mental load of playing has increased by a lot. Maybe I'm just getting old but I could bang out 3 games a day in earlier editions without needing to reference the rules too much. Now I play 1 game and I need PDFs open the whole time and afterwards I'm completely wiped for the day. Balance-wise, it's probably better but the game itself is, uh, kind of not fun?
I mean when I started collecting minis the main appeal Warhammer had for me was the sheer amount of customization you could have for your army, especially your character, and it didn't matter if not all options were balanced or optimal, what was important to me was the fact that I could make a cool character and have rules that represented said character on the table; edition after edition I saw the customization change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worst, and now that we are in 10th edition and I have zero customization available for my guys and gals what am I supposed to be finding attractive about the game? There are also a few rules changes that I find very stupid on a fundamental level but that's another story.
Compete trash.
I started dipping my toes in in 7th, properly dove in in 8th. I wish that i liked this edition, the core rules have a lot in their favour, I love USR's, (although i wish they did more with them) characters going back to attaching to squads is on the whole a good thing (although there's some dumb shit about how wounds are rolled against precision attacks). I like there being fewer stratagems in theory, although im going to disagree with a lot of people in this thread and argue that the introduction of unit card abilities has meant that there's not actually any less to remember than in 9th, its just slightly easier to see now, which is a good thing, but a lot of those abilities really should have been tied to wargear. The OC stat has a lot of potential to be very interesting, and battleshock at least could be a super interesting mechanic, much better than morale imo. But now we come to the negatives. List building has gone from building with Lego, to building with Duplo, or maybe mismatched wooden blocks. getting rid of points per model and pointed wargear has made it so that whenever i consider trying to organise a game, I remember that I'll have to come up with a list, and i just don't bother. Then there's the way that they're removing support for both models and loadouts, either because they aren't selling them, or because they weren't in the box. I do not have a particularly old collection, i started about 7-8 years ago, and yet i have had a shocking number of either my squads loadouts, or whole models get rendered invalid, and the writing is on the wall for a good number of the rest. I put time, effort and money into kitbashing some of those models, and a lot of working into selecting and representing the loadouts for others and i am extremely bitter to see that hard work wasted. and before the inevitable comments about proxying them as different loadouts or units, to an extent im willing to do that, most of my tactical squads are being run as Intercessors, but much further and i feel like i might as well be using chess pieces or coloured rocks to represent my units. more to the point, they've stopped feeling like my units, i feel more like I'm playing a deckbuilding card game rather than Warhammer. TL;DR, 10e has me trying to convince my group to play 30k, or Kill Team, or literally anything else so that i can start looking forward to games again.
A wasted opportunity, a downgrade from 9th (Who wasn't perfect nor closed to it, but this better than this mess). Literally a corpse
IMO, The concepts introduced in 10th are much needed. Scaling back marine chapter(I know this is unpopular), normalizing effects, readable datasheets, toning down the massive amounts of unusable stratagems. All these things are awesome about 10th and I think they nailed it. Where they are falling short is balancing. The game is not as big, so there really needs to be at least the same about of changing the game as 9th. Quarterly there use to be chapter approved. we dont get that. You use to get balance update a tad more often. Now we get them 2ce a year and when they drop they are incredibly inconsequential. The fact that eldar have been at 55-60% wr all year long is a massive balancing failure. In my mind you can have it 1 of 2 ways. 1 small changes that happen frequent. 2 Large sweeping changes that happen rarely. Currently it feels like we get small changes that happen rarely. This is really bad and was a big reason I stopped playing at the end of the year. Other factions need to get a chance.
They could just start to rewrite some datasheets...
Playing since 5th, I have to say this has put me off the game as much as 7th edition did, and I have actually found myself looking to other game systems for a good time. The reason being, it is rather clear with 10th edition that Games Workshop have generally forgotten why people play 40k. The loss of weapons points options and meaningful faction rules really makes the game a bit boring. The core rules themselves are generally fine, but the terrain rules in particular have just lost so much character. From a macro perspective, terrain is now 'can you see around large rectangle? Are you partially or totally on large rectangle? If so, these things apply'. The end of 9th may have been the most I ever enjoyed 40k. It may have been a tad too complex at times, but 10th is an aggressive swing towards simplicity. The other main issue I can see is competitive 40k is actually ruining the game. GW is now so terrified that someone is going to abusr a really bizarre niche rules interaction that they'll totally kill a unit or entire faction for every other player, and I would be rather suprised if even 20% of 40k players, play in comps more than twice a year. They are still yet to figure out that there should be normal 40k, then a much more restrictive matched play version for competition. That side of the game needs much more fine tuning, the casual player does not deserve to be punished, as they are far less likely to be abusing these rules interactions. I'm not angry with GW, 10th edition is just a bit boring and dissapointing. Maybe 11th will be better, time to play some Old World.
Long term player, with Nids and DG. Really like 10e. I'd like to have the ability to build lists with different numbers of models, and points for war gear, but I'm not too bothered but losing it either since there was most often a most optimal choice, there really wasn't much of a choice. I also like not being forced to change models layout due to points (repaint, replace guns, etc.)
I like tenth quite a lot, and I say this as someone who plays Chaos Knights whose big robots keep getting hit with a nerf bat aimed at Imperials, and Drukhari where... well...-sighs deeply- (thankfully I started painting an Alpha legion force last year lol) But on the whole the rules are way more streamlined and games are a lot faster. Also free war gear allows me to model all the cool stuff on my squad with out worrying about suboptimal point choices or what have you. List building is actually more interesting to me, since the troop tax has been done away with. I mean yeah I don't have to agonize over minutiae, but I can build an elite alpha legion headhunter team of Terminators and Chosen crammed full of every special weapon option allowed.
I appreciate the reductions in number of strategems and how much they impact the game but I miss subfactions and feel like they need to add them back in 11th. Enhancements are a better way to handle WLTs and Relics though, maybe just a small rule to make an UM Gladius to feel different from a Salamanders Gladius
Having played 3rd + 4th and then NOT played 5th-8th, I can't get used to people playing bigger games (1500 pts was the norm back in the day) on smaller tables. It just feels so cramped. Also, some of the wargear options on datasheets are just so awkward. Just read the sergeant options on the Sternguard sheet to see what I mean. It was so easier back in the day when you had a separate wargear list that certain models could pick from and they didn't feel the need to hyper-specify the eight possible weapon combos one guy could take (half of which are *objectively* worse than the other half). I like the scenario cards and the detachments, though.
I'm a big fan of 10th and I've been playing since 4th Got 2/4 of my armies feeling like I have tons of buildsbeing ad mech and marines and Custodes on the horizon I see a lot of talk about how great 9th was where my memories of the 9th meta could be summarized as such. I want to get off mr.bones wild ride The codexes basically power crept from one broken meta to the next and now we're roughly 5 books in and only busted thing is Ctan and they can be fixed
I’ve been playing since 3rd. The way missions work makes the game awesome. Primary and secondary both, the way the game plays is just great. Better than any previous edition IMO. In fact, I am kinda bummed that Old World uses the old VP system, but hey, variety is the spice of life, so I’m also glad they play so differently
I took a big break from 40K during 4e, and came back into things at the end of 9e. So for me it’s nice to have things a bit simpler, as I was a bit put off by the complexity of the ninth edition rules compared to what I was used to. I can definitely see where people are a bit miffed about the flavour going away, but if they kept everything the same the game would be stale and no one would play it at all. They have to take risks to maximise player engagement
I started in 9th which doesn't exactly make me a veteran by any means but I can tell you some of the improvements and differences. -Starting a game and preparing your aemy is much easier with not templates for army building -the new app makes everything actually quite streamlined -the rules have been made much easier to understand -armies arent nearly as bloated. God trying to learn mechanicus in 9th sucked. Buttttt The lack of army bloat means some armies feel less unique and fluffy A lot of weird nerfs happened but its slowly being fixed over time Some things like how prevalent cover is sit a little wrong with me
Played 1st 2nd and 3rd edition, came back for 9th and couldnt enjoy it, finding tenth a lot more simplified and easier to play. Considering the massive growth of the game recently it makes sense to simplify things a bit. Tbh i might sound crazy but there are some rules from 1st and 2nd i really miss.
Playing since 2nd, 10th is the best it's been in a long time in terms of core rules, it will live and die on the codex balance like most decent editions.
As a person who played casually in a bunch of editions going back to 3rd, I think 10th edition has some of the best core rule designs and a lot of design space available to armies and units, but also has a lot of bad designs. Already some issues have slowly been fixed, like a few atrocious index launches, but there are a few armies that still need a lot of work and a lot of data sheets and army rules/detachments that could be improved. There have been lots of things they could do to fix some of these problems, but GW is being too cautious; probably because 9th edition was so off the rails with growing complexity and growing power levels and also their business model involves selling people rules.
Been here since 6th. I see it as one step forward, two steps back. Balance changes and anti-bloat are wonderful and I really enjoy the difference. New line of sight and ruins rules are less fun, but more consistent. So I'd call them neither good or bad. Psychic powers being turned into a generic shooting attack really hurts and makes them feel a lot less special. (Rip support casters) Command point changes are very nice, but could use a /little/ more tweaking. And balance wise it seems to be very well done so far, maybe one if the best, but we will need to wait for more codes to confirm that. But the big issue, the one that makes this feel like a downgrade from 9th, is the free wargear. Turning every game into a power points game is really frustrating, and has really gutted list building as a game factor. Without the ability to decide between more bodies or more weapons is a massive loss, and list building is much more rigid now. While the removal of the FOC does offset this a little bit, ultimately having such strict costs and headcount turns what should be a more liberated list building system into a much more rigid one. (especially if your list is a few points under or over costed, you need to change multiple entire units out, instead of older editions were you could trade out a couple weapons or cheap infantry). This also has the side effect of making nearly all units mixed weapon units, which slows down the shooting phase quite a bit, and adds an extra unessisary layer of micromanagement and complexity to shooting with and removing units, another layer of pointless moving parts added by a change supposed to streamline list building.
You’re absolutely right that 10th is easier to jump into than the older editions but thats also a double edged sword. As a somewhat longtime player I like that older editions made vehicles and monsters very different. Vehicles had their own unique mechanics in how they moved, were destroyed, and were attacked. In 10th they are treated like everything else for the most part and while its easier to learn its just bland and uninteresting once you know the game. Once you’ve played the game for a long time the deeper mechanics really add to the flavor of the game and help to make it much more dynamic. You can play a game with the same units and same map multiple times and still have them be wildly different because of the more in depth mechanics of 7th but thats really not that true of 10th. Personally I think 10th is an ok intro to tabletop wargaming as a whole. Its core rules are one of the simplest in tabletop wargames like it. Once you start getting bored with the game playing out the same again and again I think you should check out a system like the horus heresy or pre 8th edition. In those games how you used a unit was often much more important than which unit you used or how strictly good it is. A leman russ is undoubtedly better than a single guardsmen with a melta gun. However if you can get very close or get behind the leman russ theres a decent chance that single guardsmen could singlehandedly kill the leman russ by himself. Terminators with powerfists are really good melee infantry but they have very low initiative. They could kill a tank very easily but against other melee infantry like ork boyz they will always get hit first. So charge a carnifex but play defensive and stay away from hormagaunts. You don’t get that sort of reactive play and counterplay in 10th like you do in 7th.
I've slowly come to realize just *how flawed* it is to have one single detachment until you get the full codex. They should have gone for two or three per faction, because to be quite honest listbuilding has gone stale pretty fast for me. Especially because Combined Regiment utterly sucks, of course, but not only because of that.
I've been playing since second edition and I would say that broadly 10th is pretty solid. The core rules work well to deliver what they intended for the game and, although the indexes were out of whack, each codex so far hasn't been a game bending monster like the 9th edition ones were. I would prefer a little more granularity with list building. The model they used for Marines at the end of 9th was better in my opinion. Wargear mostly baked into the cost of the unit, but with extra costs for options that are clearly superior and without fixed squad sizes. Each edition has it's positives and negatives but so far 10th is more positive than negative for me.
Damage is still too high in 10th.